


Zen: Thoughts and Ramblings

by phoenixreal_gaming (phoenixreal)



Series: Zen'ina, Voice of Drendari [5]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Scarred Lands (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-17 14:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11277018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixreal/pseuds/phoenixreal_gaming
Summary: Random pieces





	Zen: Thoughts and Ramblings

# Thoughts During Watch

## Somewhere around Session 25-27

 

Zen’ina, though quiet and not one to tell others what she is feeling, has become greatly attached to all of her friends, even the two dwarves.  She will never admit it to anyone, but she was greatly saddened when they thought that Einkil was dead or could not be restored to life.  She is very happy to have him back, despite his offensive odor. She holds onto those around her, as she has never been close to anyone in her life except for her mentor, who she lost.  She vowed when she lost him never to care for anyone again, but she finds herself caring more than she ever thought for the friends she has now.

      Zen’ina misses Teaka, her first real elven friend and companion.  She misses her more than she will even admit to herself.  Teaka, being the only other female in the group, shared a bond that none of the others could have.  Teaka was different, much like Zen, since she was half high elf, and half wood elf.  To most that means something, but to Zen, that just meant she was outcast, much like herself. 

      Inside Zen’ina is very angry with this so-called Shadow Lord taking Teaka away from them.  And for some strange reason him calling the goddess Teaka followed a pretender did not sit well with her…though she cannot understand why.  She finds the fact that the evil creature took Teaka and imprisoned her because she followed that goddess just as offensive…but not just because he took Teaka.  She’ll never forget the pure evil that emanated from the creature.  Inside she makes a silent vow to herself, that if it is ever in her power to save Teaka from the horrid fate that this Shadow Lord has pronounced for her, she will do it.  She will see wrath brought on him, for bringing pain to Teaka, and for speaking ill of a goddess…

      No one will ever know this except whoever may look inside and see her heart.  And she knows that it will never come to pass, because she can never be powerful enough to possibly stand up against a creature of such evil as that Shadow Lord.  She simply thinks Teaka is another of Zen’s race gone…  She is saddened by this, elvenkind has been dwindled so much, first in the divine war, and then the dark druids attack and decimation of her home in Amalthea.  There are so few of her kind left, and sometimes when she thinks about it, she feels very sad.  Will there ever be any way to rejuvenate her people?  She shivers at thinking of her forsaken cousins…their fate is far worse than her own, at least the high elves can have some hope of continuing their race. 

She stands perfectly still in the night, on her watch, her eyes ever alert in the darkness.  She looks back over her sleeping friends. Corgan sleeps soundly.  Dhal’es sits still in his trance.  Dhal’es met with what he wanted more than anything, an agent of the goddess Madriel.  Zen sighs, to be touched by the patron…how beautiful.  Beside him sits their new friend Quarion in trance, his two swords close at hand.  And Gnorm sits nearby, difficult to miss with his great wings.  She has not quite made up her mind about that pair.  Something is strange about them both.  The mystery of their imprisonment must be revealed at one point or another…  Einkill stands over on the other side of the camp, leaning against his axe…Zen frowns, he’s changed since he returned, she thinks.  She turns back to scanning the area around them…

Her mind wanders still.  She cannot help but think that whoever encounters this group as it is now will certainly not accept them.  Not humans.  There is something about them, sometimes they don’t even have to say anything.  They outnumber Zen’s people greatly, but her people are ancient…  She has yet to meet a human to accept them openly.  This bothers her a little, but not near enough for her to have open enmity with any human, they just don’t understand.  They live so fast; they can’t help but rush through life and not realize the consequences of many of their actions.  She sighs.  She walks the perimeter, completely hidden within her cloak and the shadows around her.

She feels deeply that they should do more asking first and fighting later.  The waste of life around her sometimes saddens her.  Though sometimes, the errors can be made up for, such as when they mistakenly killed many of the lizardmen.  Things worked out for the best there.  But now, what a mess they have gotten into.  Her heart tells her they must get the artifacts to the temple in Savan, no matter what.  They are sacred, and though Corean is not her patron, she respects what he is.  She fingers the shield ring on her finger, spinning it around.  On her hip is the wand with the flame symbol, she touches it slightly, its smooth surface cool.  She crouches looking out into the wild, her hand now falling on the dagger strapped to her leg.  She touches it and then her hand moves to her throat to the clasp there of the silver rose, her mind wandering back to her days with her mentor.  Mysteries…  She ponders the male voice she has heard on two occasions speak to her.  She will listen to it if it speaks again, as its words have rung true so far.

She stands to make a perimeter check, taking her sword in hand she walks silently around.  She comes back to her spot where she’s watching and she fingers the hilt of the sword again and puts it away.  She hears Einkill yell and she turns and walks back to the fire and he says time for next watch.  Zen nods and goes and wakes Dhal’es as Einkill goes and wakes Gnorm.  She sits away from the fire, more in shadow than light and pulls her legs up and ponders various things a little more, her heart sad from her all her thinking.

She pulls the strange cloak around her, which she knows from what the tag upon it is elven make, hiding herself in shadow for no particular reason other than it comforts her. Something inside tells her to continue on her path, seeking the way of shadow, continue seeking magic that dwells in the shadow, seeking the mistress of shadow whose voice she heard speak in Savan….

 

Reminiscence during watch…

(During the trip with the children, session 28)

 

      Zen’ina felt a hand drop to her shoulder, shifting her out of her trance subtlety.   She shook herself to full awareness as the hand shook her back and forth gently.  She opened her eyes and focused them on another elven face, very similar to her own.  It was Dhal’es, waking her for her watch.  She smiles and clasps the cleric’s shoulder and tells him to see the far away places well this night, and says she hopes not to have to waken him rudely in the night.  Dhal’es nods and takes his seat by the fire pit.  Zen stands slowly and stretches.  It’s about an hour after midnight, and Belsamuth’s moon hands high in the horizon this night.  She sighs and looks over as Corgan wakes Einkill and helps him get his armor on.  His waking is not as gentle, but them Einkill is not as easy to awaken.

      Zen sets her position to the right side of the camp, taking to a sturdy looking tree.  She climbs it deftly, the limbs study and easy to navigate.  She glances back to camp and notes one of the children, a small girl, watching her.  She shakes her head.  Children have no place in wilds such as this, she thinks.  She takes a seat high up where she has a clear view of a good portion of the right hand side of camp.  She holds her short bow lightly in her lap, an arrow loosely notched.  She pulls her cloak about her tightly and listens to the wilds about her.  She hears a low bellow from below.  Its Einkill asking where in Goran’s name she’s gone to now.  He steps right under the tree where she sits and she smiles.  He’s looking around, clanking noisily, as usual.  She notches her arrow and aims at the ground beside him and lets fly.  He jumps a foot then looks up, seeing nothing at first until she pushes her hood from her face.

      He frowns, but she sees no malice in the dwarf’s eyes, she doesn’t even see the mischievousness that used to lie in his eyes any more.  She smiles and tells him not to worry about her.  He goes off muttering about tree loving elves and such, and despite his gruff manor, Zen can’t help but laugh a bit at him.  She smiles, and pulls the cloak’s hood back over her head.  Somehow when she sits like this with the cloak on and alone in the dark she feels so comforted.  Just having the cloak makes her feel comfort.  She knows that it likely was not made by one of her kind, considering the inscription upon it.  But still, it is something of her people out in this world.  She sits still in the tree and her mind flies back through the years…back to Amalthea…back to a time when good men and elves died together at the hands to the Evil Druids, back when children didn’t even belong in a city…

      Zen was 72 when the war with the Druids began.  It was the same year to Amaril Shimran found her in the deepest darkest places of Amalthea.  Very shortly after Zen took up residence with the older elf, the war began with fervor.  Attack upon attack came.  And the war would have been won too…and much suffering averted, if not for Virduk making his power play and pulling his forces out.  The loss of Callistia was huge, but what was worse for poor Amalthea was the loss of the forces of people whom Virduk decided to attack with the forces he pulled back.

      Amaril began taking in orphans and injured early on in the war.  At first it was a child who lost his parents here and there and a person with a broken leg or arm that couldn’t fend for themselves, but by the time the war reached its height, Amaril’s abode was filled with people of all sorts and many children.  Amaril’s home was not usual however, as it had a sub floor, a hidden area of rooms beneath it.  The house itself was two stories high, but underneath were two additional levels.  Amaril just said that it was there when he bought the place for 700 gold from an elderly man who was going to live with his son.  The man could barely see, and only wanted to be rid of the place, but in his day the man had been quite the survivalist that touted that if one was ready one would survive.  He’d been ready alright, because the two subfloors had to have been dug out by him. 

      Once the Druid war began, Amaril began stocking up on the most unusual things, Zen thought, but she helped.  He’d gather nuts and dried fruits to put in the sub floor’s pantries.  He’d gather far more fire wood than one would use in ten years…or so Zen thought.  He bought linens and dry breads and such and bedrolls and heavy blankets.  When asked, he’d simply say he wanted to be ready for the worst if the war with the Druids went bad…which it did.  When the upper part of the house was destroyed, Zen was very glad for her mentor’s preparedness in the matter.  The house caught fire during a massive attack by the Druids that penetrated deep into Amalthea, destroying most in its path.  Luckily the fire did not spread down, as the man who built the house had put a stone flooring into it to protect the lower levels.  Once the upper house was destroyed it made a perfect place to hide the sick, injured and those who otherwise could not take care of themselves.  Zen became very involved with retrieving the children from the homes in the wake of destruction.

      Zen hears a noise to the right of her.  Alert she stands cautiously in the tree she’s in.  She looks around and sees only something moving in the distance.  The form becomes clear and she sees that its nothing but a wild creature, probably looking for food or something.  She looks across to Einkill pacing the other side of camp and she jumps down from the tree.  She walks the perimeter, eyes ever watchful, and crouches down, fingering the clasp at her neck.  Oh, Amaril, where have you gone, she ponders.  Do you know how much I miss having your ear when I am confused?  She hears one of the children moan softly in its sleep.  She sighs.  For some reason this night another group of children weighs heavily on her mind…

      Amalthea became a war zone, and Zen was right in the middle of it.  Someone had to bring food and water to those who needed it.  She was out to retrieve a pair of children one night.  Their father had been found in the street, beyond all healing and had asked someone to save his children.  He’d left them locked in a pantry so the druids would not find them.  Zen leaves the shelter of the broken down house quietly, a thick cloak covering her so she continues to go unseen, and also to hide bulky human children.

      Night has fallen over the crushed city by the time Zen reaches the house.  Damn Virduk for pulling out…if he hadn’t pursued his own means Amalthea might have stood, but as of now, she is falling.  Zen pulls her hood over her face and finds the house.  She goes in through a window at the side that is already broken.  There is a large moon out tonight, so she can see very well.  She finds a pantry with the door locked and was about to use the key she was given when something that sounded like an explosion rocks the house violently.  The floor rose at Zen’s feet, throwing her backward.  She hears crashes all around her, but then she heard a horrible high-pitched scream followed by sobbing.  Zen’s own head has been hit and she reaches up and puts a hand to a bleeding wound on the back of her head, her brain addled by the bash to her skull.  She focused her eyes and saw the pantry was open…and full of debris from the ceiling. 

      She stumbled forward and tripped several times, but finally she found her way to the pantry.  Inside her heart fell at the sight.  A small boy, no more than 10 lay beside an even smaller girl.  The girl’s head was crushed, one side a bloody mess.  A bunch of rubble pinned down the boy on his legs.  He was sobbing as he tried to shake his sister awake.  Zen asked the boy if he was hurt.  He was crying to hard to more than nod.  She began pulling the rubble away slowly and found one leg to be horribly broken and crushed.  She could see no other wounds.  She reached around him and he screamed like she’d never heard a human scream, and her hands simply sank _into_ his back…which had been crushed by something.  She pulled away as he started coughing and blood poured from his lips and he convulsed once and he fell back, eyes lifeless.  She put her hand to her mouth, only to scream as it was dripping with the boy’s blood.  She turned and ran for the door, only to be knocked off her feet by another ground shaking of some sort.

      She finally made it out the door, and into the street, where she could hear battle raging nearby, the ringing of steel and the cries of the dying.  The battle was not supposed be this far into the city!  They would find her and murder her if she did not get away.  She ran down the street until she heard the quiet mewling of an infant from one of the houses.  She heard the battle closing in but she could not leave a child…

      It was a small house, of stone and mortar.  Part of it had caved in.  Zen was surprised to find any of it intact…  She forced the door open, as fallen stones from the ceiling blocked it.  She made her way to the noise and found a small elven child crawling amidst the rubble.  She reached down and scooped it up.  Its crying did not stop but did not intensify.  She began to leave but noticed a pair of hands in the rubble, the fingers of one of them moving still.  She laid the baby down once more and began digging.  The owner of  the unmoving hand was an elven woman.  The other hand clutched at the immobile and dead hand, and as Zen dug, found it to be a young elven male.  He was moaning, so she knew he was alive.  She felt for life in the woman, but could find none.  She pulled the man to his feet, as he slowly regained a semblance of consciousness.  He could stand, but barely.  There was a nasty head wound on the front of his head. 

      Zen gathered the babe in her arms and slung the elf’s arm around her shoulder and half dragged him from the house and then, hiding as best she could with a moaning stumbling individual made her slow way away from the titanspawn that were nearing the area she had just been.  She hid in a corner and watched as they entered the house with the two dead children and then the one that she found the two survivors she had in tow.  She finally stumbled the rest of the way to Amaril’s, and found him waiting for her at the trapdoor that served as an entrance.  He took the elf and Zen cradled the babe tightly down the stairs and to the room with the rest of the orphaned and wounded.  She told Amaril the titanspawn were nearing.

 They bandaged the elf up and brought him around.  When Zen asked him who he was, all he could remember was his name was Dhal’es.  Zen smiled and told him where he was and that he would be safe.  He said he couldn’t remember anything except being wakened and brought to the place he was now.  Zen told him that it was dark out, except of course for the bright moonshine.  They talked for a while about Amalthea, Dhal’es not remembering much of anything.  About all he can remember is that he is a cleric of the healing goddess Madriel.  Zen asked if he could remember his last name, and he thought for a minute and replied that he did now…Darkshine.

Zen’s reverie broke suddenly as she stood.  She needed to check the perimeter again for anything strange.  There had been a few sightings of the goblins with many eyes and arms, but none had approached.  She fingered the hilt of her sword and felt for the magic in it.  Somehow, its magic made her feel comfort, much as her cloak did.  She closed her eyes and listened to the night wind in her ears.  She heaved a sigh, her memories of Amalthea and the war ever so fresh in her mind.  She found her tree again, and deftly climbed up again. She pulled her cloak around her tightly, glancing at her fingernails, which glow green slightly.  Her magic was her defense more than her bow…she smiled and sat back in her tree.  She pulled the cloak around her and faded into the shadows again…

 

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

The Making of A Shadow Walker

 

      Zen’ina finds herself soon on a quest for information.  Her time spent with Shay-La learning new things has not quenched her curiosity.  The men who came to her and asked about the weapons have reawakened her curiosity about the Shadow Guild.  She knows only one place to go, and that is back to Philomena who lead her to the two strangers who asked about the Shadow Guild Weapons.  She makes a stop in one evening, at the shop of Philomena, the woman to whom she went for information about the items they carried.  She looks at some incense that might interest her, and a few candles that seem of different make.  She says nothing at first to Philomena.  Soon, the shop empties of all but Zen and the proprietress.  She looks up at her.

"The two who came to see me...they mentioned some weapons our group had acquired...weapons that seemed to be very useful against shadow creatures...  I knew they were made by something called the Shadow Guild, and I did try to find them after we acquired those weapons...but I could not locate any information on it.  Might you know..."

"What do you know about the Shadow Guild?" she whispers, he face at the same time curious and surprised by the questioning that Zen is taking.

"I know that the staff I used to defeat some nasty shadow creatures was made by them.  I know our cleric had a mace of their manufacture.  The men that came to see me asked me of these two.  I would have returned them, had some damndable creature who named himself a Shadow Lord not taken them and destroyed them...and taken a friend of ours who herself held great affinity for shadows...” Zen stops and examines a candle, not being careful to use her cloak to shield her casting clothes.  She feels the need to be as open as possible with this human female.

"Your friend, she too was an elf?" Philomena asks.

Sadness passes over Zen’s face as she remembers Teaka’s abduction.  "Yes...one of the few I've seen outside of my home..."

"The Guild knew of her, although she was not one of us," she says lightly and begins to walk toward the door around Zen.   "Let us speak plainly," she says, as she locks the door and closes the shop, hanging a closed sign on the door.  She turns back around and looks intently at Zen, searching her face.  Zen does not attempt to hide the fact that she wears nearly nothing under her cloak, the mark of an arcanist.  "Shay-La says you are one of the blood of Mesos, but trustworthy.  Do you wish to know more of those like you?"

"I believe I would...I cannot deny my own nature....” Zen looks straight at her as she moves around toward the back the shop.

"In Mithril, the City of the Golem, we do not have to be as secret as we do most other places.  The paladins and clerics of Corean there are of more practical mind than others elsewhere.  As long as we declare ourselves, we are free from persecution; indeed, we are valued for our prowess and allowed to practice our arts in peace."

 

"This can be something of an advantage...” Zen says, watching this human very carefully.  She’s never spoken at length with such an enigmatic human.

"There the Guild thrives, and many a mage is drawn to the tolerance and protection, so ironic in such a city.  But Mithril is hard pressed on many quarters, and pragmatism resulting from it has allowed us to thrive."

Zen nods, knowing that this is a great advantage for any group, especially one whose members are not openly accepted.  "This is very understandable...."

"Most who join us do so under the general name, satisfied to be accepted with little question.  There is another meaning to our name, however, one the City Fathers of Mithril would not be pleased to learn."

"Oh?" Zen looks at her curiously, her own apprehension of coming here and taking this step fading.  Somehow, some part of her knew exactly what to expect…

"It is a wily twist, so open as to be unsuspected, and the Mistress is pleased that it is so," she says and carefully watches you for your reaction.

Zen’s attention never wavers from the woman.  She shows only open curiosity and interest.  The name rings a string within her heart.  Something about the way she says it and the way the words sound, there is something to it.  "The Mistress?" Zen asks, though she really has no need of asking.

"Tell me, are you more comforted sitting in bright light or total darkness?"  Philomena asks suddenly turning to stare directly into Zen’s face now.

Turning her head to the side, Zen thinks but a moment, "Darkness beckons me more and more each day...I thought at first it was some imagining of mine...but since I've come back to Savan this time, I feel it...” Stopping Zen reflects for a moment.  "I think I first felt it after the festival here...when...we were all close to the...gods..."

"Were there any you felt closer to than others?" she asks, appearing to at last have her own interest peaked.

"A sense of someone that was not among those who are the greater gods...another voice...lighter...but darker...if that makes sense...” Confusion crosses Zen’s face for a moment then it seems to cleat, a type of understanding showing briefly on her face.  "Another who was not among the eight..."

Philomena steps behind a waterfall and seems to disappear from sight.  Zen is at first shocked then looks around the shop and walks toward the place she was at, knowing that there are such things as to allow passage away from a place without seeming like a door, such as mirrors.  Just as she looks, she then steps out of the backroom near the counter, and asks, "Are you easily frightened?"

"I've found that fear does not do any good...fear only hinders you...” Zen says with a smirk.  "I was asked that recently...before we went up Kadum's Horn...same answer...No."

"Lamias, see if that is true," Philomena says out loud, and her shadow begins walking toward Zen.

"Lamias..." Zen repeats, cocking her head to the side and watching the Shadow move toward her.  She stands perfectly still.  A surge of something goes through her…not fear, more like excitement.  Though she’s battled creatures like this, there is something different now.  "That is something I'd like to learn...."

"It is true what they say, then, that you elves are not an easily frightened lot," she smiles.  "You will not mind if Lamias shakes your hand, then," she says as the shadow sticks out something like a hand toward Zen.

      "No, of course not...." Zen does not hesitate to respond but she knows what these things can do to a person.  Not knowing what else to say, she smiles and extends her hand outward toward the creature and speaks softly, her eyes hooded.  "Lamias...nice to meet you...."

Suddenly Zen feels like every ounce of strength is drawn from her.  Her breath comes heavier, feeling as though there is a weight upon her chest.  She feels very wobbly in the knees, almost to the point of dropping to them, but she does not.  She will not be weak in front of this woman.  She is not, however surprised by this.  She blinks rapidly, wavering slightly in her stance,  "Its the same...but different...." I'll say, looking up at her.  "Just like the evil ones but your friend..."

"My friend is different, as are we,” she says, and as suddenly as the weakness onset her, the strength returns to her body.  Zen takes a deep breath and says slowly, "That much is evident..."

"How do you feel now?" Philomena asks.  Zen blinks again.  She feels the same as she did before the weakness came at touching the creature, yet something is definitely different.  There is some strangeness yet left inside her.  Philomena stands by a brightly burning lamp.   "Perhaps the light hurts your eyes," she says, as she turns down the oil lamp.  "Is that better?"

"Alright...I think...something is different...but I feel fine..." Zen stammers, not quite sure what she should say.  She has an amazingly strong compulsion to step into the shadows, but she also has a fearsome sense that if she does so, she will never be the same again.  She feels that her unconnected life in the light may be forever altered.  Zen looks up to see Philomena watching her intently as if this is what is expected.

Zen takes another deep breath and whispers, "Sometimes, change is what come of life," and she pulls her cloak over her, feeling a need for its comfort in this strange situation.  And with that she steps into the shadows, a coolness coming over her, and all light around her growing much dimmer.

Zen hears Philomena's voice,  "Impressive.  Riatan says the Mistress told him you bore watching, if one can see you!" she says laughing gaily.

"The Mistress...will you tell me of her?" Zen asks softly from the shadows still.  She feels strange in voicing this for her heart keeps telling her she knows already.

"You have already accepted her, although you may not know it.  She is our strength, our faith.  She makes us who we are, the guild within a guild.  She is neither light nor darkness, but daughter of shadow, that which is in between.  We call her Mistress.  She is Drendari," Philomena says in a passionate voice, showing absolute allegiance to the Mistress.

"I do know...she has spoken to me...she was the voice...” Smiling, "And so to accept the shadows is to accept the Mistress...." Zen whispers knowing that it was the Mistress herself whose voice she heard that day.

"Come, let us begin.  There is much to tell, much to show, much to instruct," Philomena says, smiling.

"Very Well....” Zen says softly, stepping from the shadows and blinking as the already dim light hits her eyes.

"You will make enemies coming to us.  Powerful ones. Are you up to the challenge?" Philomena asks, tilting her head to the side slightly, a questioning look on her face.  She doesn’t look like she expects Zen to say no, however.

"Enemies are put before a person to be defeated.  The challenge is to withstand those enemies and then to defeat them; if you are not worthy, you are defeated.  I believe that the challenge is mine to accept and to stand up to.  I will face any enemies that come.  I've seen more carnage in my life than most would want to see.  I watched too many of my people die in my home during the Druid war...  I will stand to any challenge now," Zen says in a voice tinged with sadness, but also with pride.

"Becoming a Shadow Mage is also costly.  Are you up to that challenge too?" Philomena asks, arching a brow.

"Yes...” Zen says, nodding her head for emphasis.  “For I see it as learning what I already am...I have no other need of material wealth...it can go to this end for me...or in times lacking gold, I will offer service or trade of a worthy item if I have one to spare at such time....” Zen shrugs. 

"Well spoken.  Let us first offer a sacrifice and prayer to the goddess," she says, walking toward to the backroom.  She pushes in a wall and inside there is a small statue, offering bowl, incense, and candle.  She lights candle and incense, places a gold coin, that Zen notices briefly that is minted, in the bowl, and dedicates both Zen and herself to Drendari.  When this is finished, Philomena stands and speaks to the shade, "Come Lamias, we have a new Shadow Walker to make!" 

Zen follows her and does not return for seventeen days.  She trains under the two men who visited her before.  There are others, but all are human.  She is sworn to secrecy about all those she meets, she cannot reveal who they are or anything about the Shadow Walkers even to her friends.  She is told, since they are her friends, if they knew, they would be in the same danger that Zen herself is in for being one of them.  She may only say she belongs to the Guild of Shadow.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

Thoughts After Training

 

Zen’s eyes rove the tavern.  She smiles at Shay-La as she notices her busy behind the bar. Their eyes meet briefly, and Zen heads to the bar before Shay-La moves to the next customer.  Zen sighs.  She’s tired, very tired and all she wants is a drink and a bed.  She makes her way to where Shay-La stands.  Zen hasn’t seen her since she finished training her in her sorceress abilities a very long, for Zen, seventeen days ago.  Before Zen even says anything Shay-La has a mint brandy set before her.  “I take it you’ll need a room tonight?” she asks her, looking her over.  Zen merely nods to her, he face showing her haggardness.  "Haven't seen you in a while.  Been off having fun again?" she asks, and Zen takes note a very slight smile upon her lips as she takes Zen’s coins for the room and the drink.  Zen only offers a smile and a shrug, “You know me…” And turns and goes toward the back of the tavern and takes a seat in the lightless corner. 

As Zen sits, one of the serving girls walks by and reaches to turn on the lamp behind Zen.  Zen puts up her hand.  “There’s no need, leave it off…” The girl looks at her. “But m’lady, its dark back here are ye sure?”  Zen nods and the girl, keeping an eye back to her.  Zen merely sips her brandy and lets the refreshing feeling wash over her.

Zen stays in the tavern for the evening, Shay-La sending her drinks now and again, things that any elf would appreciate.  More than a few times, when new people enter the tavern, Zen takes notice that she does not get the customary stares.  They seem to look straight through her.  Zen finds herself more than amused by this.

She simply watches the crowd.  Corgan isn’t back yet, and she hasn’t seen Gnorm, Einkill, or Dhal’es since she left for her “special” training.  As she sits, she thinks about how she’s not the same as she was.  She feels different.  Somehow.  Its like something inside her has altered…and not just superficially.

As she’s sitting her mind slips back in time, back to when she was first learning exactly how different she was from the others her age…

Zen’s family was not a family that had an spellcasters in it.  After the divine war, when their patriarch, Zen’s grandfather, disappeared, no one in the family had access to the arcane arts.  And none knew for sure if Zen’s grandfather was really an arcanist or just a trickster.  Though the attitude in Amalthea was not one of fear, as elves never fear magical arts, it was strained.  Clerics, human mostly, gained a distrust of the arcane spellcasters during this time, as it was thought that arcane magic was a gift of the titans, and not of the gods.  Zen’s family did not make any change to their worship, they were Denev’s worshippers from birth.  This was any good Amalthean should be, and how Zen should have been.  Zen, however never felt like she was complete.  When she began to manifest her powers, her mother was the one to tell her to stop doing such things.  That it was not right after the war…

Zen though could not control the magic in her own body.  She was having a great deal of trouble with it.  But the scary part was the awful heat when she manifested some odd thing or another.  It scared her beyond belief.  She tried hard not to do anything to make it happen, but as usual with those of her kind, it was not possible to stop her natural progression.  She tried not to manifest anything in front of her family.  She managed to somewhat control herself.  She learned the bow and the sword beside her father, who was a good man, if sometimes not always in tune with his children’s lives.  Zen was not very close to her brothers and sisters.  They shied away from her and tended to speak of her to each other in hushed voices.  It was if her nature scared them.  They would not openly say anything to her, but Zen knew that they did talk about her to one another.  Dah’tine would always come to her aide, bringing their mother’s ire upon himself, instead of his little sister, until he ran off to become a paladin of Corean.  Ryanna left when Zen was young, a priestess of Tanil was not always the most welcome in Amalthea, they were tolerated as a daughter of Denev.  Zen lived with her parents until she was 62 years of age.  By no means was she mature enough to be out on her own, but something was wrong, her father had become courser and less tolerant.  She and her younger brother got into an argument, and she could no control the reaction that sent him reeling backward into the wall.  Thus she found herself cast from their home for this transgression by her mother.

Though Zen now had some inkling into why it was, at the time she had no idea why being on her own actually comforted her.  She only knew that the only person she could count on was herself, and nothing more.  She took to the dark areas of Amalthea quickly, and found that if she remained hidden from everyone that she would not be bothered.  Then her mentor found her and she was in a place where she was not alone…but yet she was.  Then the Druid war came crashing down upon her and she was changed by it.  Any friends she made seemed to be killed.  It was only by Amaril’s devices that they were able to live.  Zen saw many dead, and many more dying as she and Amaril tried to help as many as they could.  Zen though got so detached, that even watching a good friend die would not bother her any longer by the time the war ended.  She was still quite fond of Amaril, but then he left her too, with no explanation.  In her heart, she told herself she’d never become that close to anyone again…

She left Amalthea to see everything.  She was certain someone out there was like she was…and she met another elf named Teaka….who for some reason Zen could not explain was more like she was than she was different, even though her race was not fully high elven, like Dhal’es, who Zen knew from Amalthea.   Zen thought at first it was because she was a fellow female, but then she realized it was not just that…something else.

Now, as Zen sat in her unlighted corner, she realized what it was.  Drendari…the mistress was the reason.  For so long Zen had felt her presence and knew that something was there, but she could not name it.  She heard her voice even…  The reason she and Teaka were so akin was they were alike in the heart and not just in the physical reasons.  Zen feels so much relief now to know there is something out there…just for her.

Zen waves at Shay-La as she goes to her room, and she lies down.  She then turns out all the lights, darkening the room all the way, as it is just now dusk.  She hides herself in shadows, wrapping her cloak around her and whispers a prayer to her new goddess.  She feels as though she should talk to her as though she were before her.  She feels a need to thank her and to tell her that she is here, if only to prove to herself that she is not alone and that someone else is listening to her.

“Mistress of Shadows, hear me in the shadows. I seek the powers and knowledge I need To carry out your will in this world of light And to go wherever it is you may lead. Among your faithful I count myself. I will be your agent as long as I live. I will always put you first in my heart. This is the honorable pledge I give. My oath has been given already to you, I only seek to affirm my gift before Of myself in your service so great. I only speak affirm that I am sure. My allegiance is yours for all of my life, For any who name themselves your foe, Will find my blade and spells at your call. They shall find the eternal darkness, I know.   Of a heart that is full for the first time, Of a soul that never had someone true,  I bring them both here to the Shadow And give them each forever to you. Oh Mistress, hear my voice in the shadows, Mistress of Shadow, that lies not in the light, Mistress of Shadow, that lies not in the dark, I stand here in between, in shadow, tonight.”

She stands still for a few moments and hears something that she does not expect, a male voice, deep and soft at the same time, whispers "Well done, I take this prayer straight away...” There is an almost physical presence, and then it is gone as fast as it came.  Zen slowly sits down on the bed and closes her eyes, her heart full.  She swallows hard and takes a deep breath, “Thank you…” she whispers.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

**  
**

# Zen and her New Charge

 

_“Once we were powerful and numerous, but now we are nearly all dead.  The evil have made us their enemies, and the ignorant and greedy have made us the hunted.  I am wounded to death by those I would otherwise call friend, and connot permit the slumbering to be born into this world without a protector.  Therefore…._

_“Do not touch my brass baby unless the innate energy of Mesos flows in your veins, for you will get a terrible shock.  And if Mesos’ energy does flow in your veins, do not touch my baby unless you are ready to bond with it._

_“Now only my half-son Dronis is left…_

_“If only my mate were here.  He could shape, but I cannot… Oh…I…die….”_

The words made Zen’s blood pound in her ears.  They were etched directly into the stone.  She only stared and read the words again.  They didn’t change, and she didn’t expect them to.  Her heart was in her throat as she let the words sink in.  If the others said anything, she did not hear it.  She turned and looked and began to walk.  She could not see very far, and as she did not ask the others to come with her she took an arrow and made it her light as she walked away behind the huge creature’s skeleton.  They watched for a moment, and then followed.  If they speak or talk to her, she heeds them not. 

Zen moves with determination, facing forward because she knows that whatever it is, it is there for her to find.  She finds a cradle of some sort that looks like it was put there for something to be rocked in, it is about five feet wide and eight feet long, made of stone.  Zen approaches it.  They hear strange noises as they near, something like hissing and crackling, like energy almost.  To her, she is the only one here besides what she is here to find.  She reaches out and touches the cradle, at the same time excited and fearful, but not fearful enough to not complete whatever rite this is.

The others talk and they surly do not think Zen would do something so rash as to do as the note etched in the stone directed…would she?  She is far too careful.  They do not understand, not in the least, they are not channel the energy of Mesos.  They cannot know how this is to her. 

She pulls herself up to where she can see inside the cradle.  As she moves she thinks of whatever this is, it was protected by that huge creature.  Either that or that creature was the one who etched the note…which would mean that was the mother of whatever this “brass baby” is, for Zen is certain that that is what the cradle is for.  Zen cannot help but recall that it was not long ago that Philomena mentioned her being of the “blood of Mesos.”

Zen looks inside to see one of the strangest things that she’s ever seen.  Inside the cradle is a rather large egg that is deep bluish purple in color, and on the outside white yellow electric currents pulse all over it.  Zen smiles.  That would be the shock one would receive without the innate energies of Mesos…  As Zen stares motionless at the egg, the only sounds she hears are the hissing and crackling sounds coming from the cradle and her own blood beating in her ears.  The energy around the egg would be enough to send most people running away from it, but not Zen.  For some reason she felt that the mother of this creature did this to protect it, and that she was good.  She meant what she said in that note.  She slowly reaches her hand out, and lets it hover.

Her heartbeat is loud in her ears now.  She is totally unaware of anything else at this point.  Her hand hovers just above the surface where the energy whips across it.  She feels some apprehension.  Whatever this is, she feels it will be a lifelong duty for her.  She would be the protector that its mother wanted, and she would do it well, with her life.  In the back of her mind, she knew that if the others knew what she was looking at and thinking of doing, they’d try to stop her. They would think her more careful than this…

      She reaches out, her hand perfectly steady and touches the surface of the egg.  As soon as her hand touched, green energy began to flow through it and through Zen, and then the egg splits open to reveal a mottled brown creature with small wings on its back.  It looks up at Zen, and sticks out its tongue and hisses at her.  Zen smiles, truly amazed, her heart beating very fast by now.  She reaches down and picks the tiny creature up and turns to face the others who simply stand staring.  She looks more toward Corgan, and says softly, “Look what I found.”

She returns to the others and Corgan pets it a little, it shies away, but does not do anything else.  Corgan uses his newfound ability to sense magic to see if the creature is magic or not, but finds at the moment both it and Zen are radiating quite a lot of magic.  Gnorm, being the practical paladin that he is checks to see if it is an evil creature and finds that it is not.  Zen holds it very close talking to it a bit and offers some food, which it eats.  Zen follows the rest on their way, but with only part of her attention…

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

Thoughts On Another Sleepless Night

 

Zen realized that the hardest thing in the world to do was nothing to do with adventuring.  It was not slaying evil titanspawn.  It was not fighting innumerable wretched beats.  It was not even fighting to be accepted in a world that did not always look kindly on Zen.  It was not anything that Zen’ina Fyrestarr had ever done or seen.  Nope, none of that even came close to the hardest thing in the world. 

      Being a mother.

      And now, in the middle of her trance, Zen realizes this more than ever as she slowly opens her eyes and focuses on the small creature nipping at her fingers and nearly screaming in pitiful hunger.  Zen takes a deep breath and looks at him for a minute first, his small triangular head cocked to the side and his small forked tongue flicking out.  His hunger pains are very real, as Zen can feel all to clear through the link they now share.  She sighs and touches him.  Despite being disturbed, she feels not the slightest amount of anger toward him though.  Her fingers and other extremities, including her nose, have become quite sore from nips from this little guy.  She sighs, and bites her lip.  She can’t get a whole nights rest for anything anymore since he fed on whatever magic was coming from that area they saw.  Frustration has become very close to her lately, but she looks at Drax and feels a wave of…love?  Zen shakes her head and goes to dig out something for him to eat.  She feeds him and gives him water and he feels contented and curls up and falls fast asleep.  She wonders at him, how can one tiny creature possibly eat so much food and where is he putting it?  She’s adventured with two dwarves, and dwarves can eat quite a bit, but Drax is even out eating the hardiest dwarf ever!

      Zen runs her hands along his back between what will eventually become wings.  Will you look like your mother when you are grown, she asks in her mind.  How old was she, I wonder…  Zen knows he is intelligent, very much so.  She knows that she’s never seen another baby creature show this type of development, other than a baby humanoid.  Zen never dreamed of having her own children.  For so long after the Druid war, the thought of bringing life into a world so scarred as this scared her, which is what set her to adventure.  But this, this was more.  This was bigger than she, and much more important.  She sighs and sits with him sleeping soundly in her lap. 

      She looks upward, thanking the gods in turn and then turning her eyes toward the mistress.  Out loud she whispers, “Mistress, guide me where I need to go.  This whole thing is new to me.  I’ve never taken care of something like this; I’ve never been a mother.  I feel like this creature is more my own than if I should bear five hundred children from my own body.  I do not understand this all yet, but I know that if nothing else, you are with me, in my heart and soul.  I welcome your presence at all times, and I thank you for your comforting shadows in which I may feel most at home.”  Zen sits there a moment and stares at the young one in her lap and whispers, “Shadow…and flame…”  She shakes her head.  What does that mean?  She thinks.  I do use fire magic a lot, she thinks.  But why should that matter?  Shadow and flame…

She has about two or three hours, she figures before he’s up again, so she decides to trance quickly before he decides he needs more food.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

Thoughts while with the Pecks underground

 

Zen sits quietly.  Like always.  She wraps the cloak around her tighter, the comforting darkness covering her.   She hears the light “tink, tink” of the Peck making their stairs. _I’ll give underground one thing,_ she thinks, _I can certainly find enough shadows to my liking._   She looks around, her eyes falling on Draxus.  She smiles, her heart full to think about him.  _He’s become more and more able to do things, like capturing those slugs and eating better.  He must be growing fast_ , she thinks.  She’s noticed him flexing the wings on his back more and more lately.  Maybe he does fly… Zen had not been so sure if he would be able to or not.  Sometimes there are creatures that have wings that don’t fly…

      She stares into the darkness, not able to see more than five feet at the moment, but she still cannot wait to get back to Savan and see Shay-La again.  And now to see Philomena… Or maybe they will head to Mithril instead.  _Oh, how I would love that!  To see the great city, and the great Shadow Guild there!_   Zen’s heart soars at the prospect.  And maybe… She shakes her head.  No, there is so little chance he’d be there…afterall he may be dead… Zen shivers at the thought of her strong brother being dead.  _No, he’s still alive, I’m sure…just…_ She stops thinking about it.  She doesn’t want to think that he’s changed and may hate her now…but she thinks it anyway.  She shakes her head strongly _.  No.  That would not be like him.  He’s kind and gentle, if hot tempered…and he always fought with Mother about me_ , she thinks.

      I just want to go…home?  Zen stops and realizes that some part of her deep down still thinks of Amalthea as home.  But the rest of her thinks of Savan now as her home.  She sighs.  Being alone in the dark is good to think but sometimes it seems like I think too much.  Zen shivers.  _What if we never get out of here?  No I can’t think that way…we will, we have to, I have to take care of Draxus.  And I have to make the Mistress proud._ Zen sits up a little straighter. _There is a way, there is always a way, and we’ll find it like we always do._ Zen smirks.  _The Mistress does not take in weaklings, and I am no weakling.  Draxus’ mother trusted in me, though she didn’t know me, and I will make sure her trust is not misplaced._   Zen stands and walks around a bit, getting the blood back to her legs. She looks up and she feels for any indication for time.  She feels it must be near twilight…  She steps a bit away from the others and hides herself in shadow and speaks softly to her Goddess.

      “Oh, Mistress hear me tonight, though I know not if the time is dusk or not.  Let us find our way from this place, so that I might find my way back to help you.  I don’t ask for you to do this for us, I ask for guidance through the shadows of this place.  I know that you hear me sometimes, and I hope you hear me now.  To make it out of here, to live through this, is all that I wish for myself and all my friends.  I am not simply being weak and giving up.  It is simply that we are facing odds that are looking insurmountable…we have enemies at the front and enemies at the back, and no way around them.  We, I, cannot sacrifice Tamaril to those strange dwarves, it is not a right thing to do.  Our mission did not come from you, Oh great Mistress, but I work for you at all times.  I feel that by completing this mission for the dwarves, I may garner important information useful to you and the others of the Faithful. I do not know if the Dark Elves are of any importance to you Mistress, so I will do what I can for you while I am here. 

“You have blessed me with much already, and for that I thank you greatly.  More blessings, I am sure, you will grant, as long as I remain your faithful servant.  And that I shall remain forever.  Draxus shall grow to revere you as well, my mistress, though I know not what exactly he is.  I feel his intelligence growing day by day.  So, Mistress, I stand here tonight, hidden in shadow to speak with you.  I do not beg for help.  I know that we can find a way on our own.  I only ask that if it is in your interest to aid me and my fellows on our journey, which for me is also a journey for you, great Mistress, I would ask that you aided us.  Please Mistress, guide me through this time, so that I may continue to work for you in our Missions.  In the space between light and dark, I stand and pray, my Mistress, and pray that you guide me in your own way through this…”

Zen bows to the shadows around her and returns to where the others are.  Draxus is still asleep, his belly full of strange worms and grubs and such.  She lovingly pats his head and smiles, and a tear slips from her eye and falls on him as she stands.  The Mistress and Draxus are with her.  Her heart is indeed full…

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

 

Thoughts on watch after Vamp Encounter 

 

Zen had not experienced much along the lines of fear very often since the Druid War.  She learned that fear can mean death if you hesitate to act because of it.  But in that strange star-shaped cell, she knew it once more when she could not reach her Mistress.  She was very glad however not to be a priest in that place.  But still, once one has gotten used to the comforting presence of the divine in their everyday life, its hard not to have it there.

      Lucky for Zen, no matter what, she had Draxus.  He was always there, in her mind and in her heart.  She sighs, and looks around into the deep darkness, into which she may see five meager feet without a light.  She envies the dwarves for their born ability to see without light at all.  Ahh…but from what she has heard when she returns to the Guild for further training she shall learn such qualities.  She can hardly wait for her next bout of training, as she can feel the raw power building within herself.  

Suddenly, for no real reason she stands and throws her arms back and her face to the ceiling and spins on one foot in a great circle laughing as she does so.  “You’ll not control me…” she whispers to the darkness.  “I will control you…”  She stops and looks to see Einkill looking at her like one gone mad.  She smiles and bows to the dwarf who always looks so dour, especially now since they acquired two new people.  She shrugs as she sees him mutter something under his breath and turn back to pacing the area.  Her chest feels tight as he looks at her.  “I can’t believe I hurt him, on purpose, like that,” she whispers.  “I’ll find out if there is any way to counter something like that when I go to Mithril…”  Whatever mirth she felt momentarily fades.

“My brother…” she whispers.  “When we go to Mithril will my brother be there?”  She slowly  sinks to the floor.  Family has been on her mind more and more ever since she encountered Corgan’s parents.  Draxus puts his head on her lap and she absently stokes his back between his small wings.  What will he think?  Will he even know who I am?  She fingers the pendant around her neck that bears her family symbol with her other hand.  I’m still a Fyrestarr, no matter what…but what if he rejects me?  She looks at her own body.  What if he judges me like so many by what I look like.  Her eyes fall on the crystal handled daggar strapped to her thigh, then move to the scanty clothes she wears, the great medallion that she does not know what it does, the broach, the rune covered gloves…  What would any of my family say? She wonders briefly.  Will they speak to me or will they label me a witch….

Draxus makes a noise and Zen smiles again, picking him up lovingly and hugging him tightly to her chest.  She sets him back down again.  “You know me…don’t you love?  Do you know my mind as I know yours?  I promise, one day, we’ll find out what happened to your old family…  That’s what we’ll do one day when you are bigger.”  She smiles and stands slowly stretching and she moves to where Einkill stands, a dour expression on his face.

She suddenly leans down and gives the dwarf a great hug and stands straight and kisses him on the forehead.  She smiles at him, as he is far too startled by her actions to move.  In elven she says, “Einkill, You are one of the best friends I could ever want…”  He looks at her strangely, and she adds, in her best attempt at dwarven, the words “friend dwarf…”  Einkill stares at her as she turns and returns to Draxus, and she hears him say something about not drinking any water not created by Dhal’es…

Zen returns to Draxus and continues to play with him, as he is growing more and more energetic.  She passes the two new elves, but chooses to ignore them, especially the dark one.  She will deal with them once she has dealt with herself.  She would watch him come morning, she was curious to see if he had one of those silly “spellbooks” like Tamaril…

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

Thoughts after incident where the Dark Elf killed her and she returned via hero point

 

Zen felt death come and go.  She felt the icy talons wrapping around her very heart, and though she knew that the Mistress would be with her, she would not allow death the chance to take hold.  Somehow, she lived.  And Zen’s mind kept coming back to that point.  She should be dead. 

      When she watched the culprit of this act have his head severed from his shoulders, her heart leaped and a piece of her felt satisfaction.  He would not have thought twice killing her, and she would now not think twice of seeing him killed.  Though part of her loathed not being able to kill him herself, she was glad all the same, which is why of all the things in the world to do, she kissed the dwarf.  What’s in a kiss?  Nothing…not really.  Merely something to shock the poor dwarf more than anything.  And to thank him.  But her thanks is not just for this one time, this one foe that he’s slain, its more than that.  Its for a year of traveling together and protecting each other and loving each other’s friendship…  No one kisses enough anymore, her distracted mind thinks.  No one loves enough, and if they love they don’t show it.  Her best friends in the entire world are around her…two dwarves, an elf, and a winged elf… what more could she want?

      Zen has learned to ignore many things.  She’s learned to ignore the stares that people send her way.  She’s ignored the comments about her manner of dress, and what she is.  They don’t hurt anymore, because she can’t let them hurt.  And since she’s been training with people like her, she’s heard of others.  Other Shadowdancer mages…even a rumor of another elf like her in Mithril that trains.  She wonders if she experiences the same pains that she herself has?

      But her friends take care of her…not just because she is useful, but because she is a friend.  They don’t want to see her life end.  And she doesn’t want to see their lives end.  Somehow, she believes they have work to do on Scarn, work that no one else can or will do.  She sighs, her mind wandering as they prepare to leave this Gods forsaken mountain and return to Burok Torn.  She’s ready.  She wants only some time between herself, Draxus, and her Mistress.  Quasit, huh?  Zen doesn’t think it feels right, however, as Benelish had called Draxus.  She doesn’t know much about Demons but she thinks they are evil, and that Gnorm would have been able to tell…unless their owners make them bad?  She shrugs that off.  Benalish knows a lot…but not everything…  Well, she’ll find out what this Kinogad knows.  Somehow, it keeps gnawing at the back of her mind that she’s heard that name somewhere before….

      Zen is a myriad of emotions at this point.  Her mind is going several different directions at once, and she is not even sure that any of them are right.  She’s wrestled with emotion before, but she controlled it…maybe she controlled it too well, and now she doesn’t know what to do with it…

      She cries sometimes, when no one else can see her, when she is awake before the dawn.  She doesn’t know why, it just comes to her and she doesn’t know why.  Its like her heart hurts.  From what, she doesn’t know.  Maybe its all those years that she wouldn’t let it hurt, coming crashing down on her at one time.  She won’t tell the others, she can’t, they would think her weak for it.  But they don’t know, how could they ever know and how could they understand the pain of being forced into what you do because of what you are?  Zen doesn’t hate herself anymore, and she doesn’t hate her power, but she knows too well, that if not for her power, she could have led a normal life…  She doesn’t feel that way all the time, just sometimes…then she braces herself for the day, and remembers, that without her power, she’d not be where she is now…and she moves on, trying not to think of things like her parents and family…

      Ever since the day her mother made it clear that she was not wanted, Zen thought she’d always be alone.  And when one has come to that conclusion, which is where one remains.  Now, she had a charge, a child to take care of.  And that changed a lot.  Having the mistress to guide her also has changed a lot.  Living where she should have died has done a lot more.  She doesn’t think she’ll cry for the past anymore now.  It’s a useless gesture.

      She’s made a choice… something that may or may not come about.  She will seek out her family and return to contact with them.  She doesn’t know if they all live, but she will find out.  And if they do not live, she will mourn their deaths and mourn not having been there.  She will start in Mithril where her brother was last at, and then when they go to Vera Tre she will enter Amalthea and search for her parents and the rest of her siblings.  If nothing else, she will have closure on that part of her life.  She finds herself hoping her mother lives.  She would like to show her that she is not a creature of evil.

She does this in a split second.  And somehow she has made herself stronger for this conviction.  But first, she will find this Kinogad…then she will find her family.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

** Quiet Night in Mullis Town **

Zen sits in her room quietly.  Draxus has already gone to sleep, actually crawled under the bed, like usual.  She’s used her spell to clean off all of the soot that she got on her while helping those people put out that nasty fire.  Her mind wanders again and again.  She thinks and thinks some more on what has transpired.  _Sometimes part of me tells me that I’m crazy.  I guess that could be said as true.  I’m certainly not…shy.  I guess sitting here, some of the things I’ve done have been crazy.  I knew that I was taking a huge gamble walking back into that den of thieves.  I knew what those people were, but part of me wanted to show them that I knew exactly what they were.  Part of me wanted to be around people who share my beliefs…even if those people are extremely dangerous.  I suppose toying with my life like that was wrong._ Her eyes fall on the sleeping form of Draxus, who seems almost wedged under the bed.  Her features soften slightly as she watches him sleep, on his back, his little belly so full he cannot sleep any other way.  One wouldn’t see him if they didn’t know where to look. _I feel a little bad about it now, as I am sure that I could have been killed or worse there and then Draxus would be alone.  Some part of me felt safe, though.  Even though I knew that I might die there if I made one wrong move, part of me felt like I would not be harmed.  As if the Mistress watched me even then.  I feel like maybe I’ve proved something to myself.  I’ve proved that I trust in the Mistress._ Zen stands and moves toward the window and looks out over Mullis Town.  A really nice city, too bad most people don’t know what goes on during the night.

 _Ah, but I really don’t know if I’ve proved anything except that I am aware of the things that work in shadow.  They would have no way of knowing my station as a Shadow Walker, as one of the faithful.  Its not one of those things one advertises.  One day I may go back and see them again…just to prove the answer to his question of whether I’m powerful or dumb…I think I’ll have that answer for him one day.  One day when I know more about the Mistress and am closer to her._ Zen smiles and moves toward the chair beside her bed.  She feels ready to sleep, well, trance now.  She will give sleeping in inns one thing, at least she doesn’t have to sleep with everything on like she does in the wilds.  She takes the bracers off and places them on the chair, followed by the two rings.  Then she peels her gloves off, laying them on top of the bracers.  She unclasps the fireball bead necklace and lays it on the chair next, and then her plain family insignia.  She then lays the short sword and its sheath on the chair followed by her dagger and strap that is on her thigh.  She leaves her boots by the chair on the floor and then lays her cloak over the top of it all, covering it all up.  Anyone looking into her room would see a cloak on a chair with a pair of boots beside it and a bag. _There._

 _Still, perhaps it was not all in good judgment to go there.  Perhaps I am too bold._ She sits on the bed with her back to the wall and stares at the ceiling.  _But I cannot help that in the slightest, it’s my nature to not be timid.  I’ll not tell the others what I did.  They shall never know that I went to that place again.  It would not be right to put them in danger by that knowledge, just as I don’t put them in danger of the knowledge of my station within Drendari’s favored._ She nods her head slowly, knowing that to be the truth.  She’d never be able to tell them.  _I doubt that they even know about the Mistress in the slightest.  A pity when she can help those who seek to use the shadow so much._ Zen looks into the far off lands where all is peaceful.  Her dreams maybe a bit different from most of her kind, for in her far off lands there are ample shadows, and plenty of people in the, but Zen can see them all…

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

A Night of Thoughts in Mithril

 

Zen finds herself touching the place where Tendra hit her earlier that day later that evening.  She tries not to arouse suspicion in her companions. Einkill and Corgan did not even ask her why the woman hit her.  Zen seems a bit thoughtful that evening, and not even very talkative about the Temple City.  Her mind wanders this eve, and everyone soon realizes this after several unsuccessful attempts to get her attention while she’s lost in thought.  Zen has certainly found someone of great respect to call her trainer here in Mithril, but all in all, Mithril seems too divided. 

 _The Wizards don’t seem to like us sorcerers very much, and I don’t quite understand that…_ Zen thinks as she absentmindedly drops food to Draxus in her bag.  _It must be all those books they have to study.  They spend so long learning how to chant their spells and what things to use as a focus that they just don’t have any fun._ Zen watches as Einkill tells Dhal’es about the fun they had meeting people.  Zen knows he’s telling her as much as he’s telling Dhal’es.  But she doesn’t hear.  Corgan seems to notice, but then he’s very perceptive.  _Then even their leader of the Guild of the Shadow lives in Temple City with the rest of her wizards and I suppose they read more dusty old books and learn how to control the stuff I was born with._   Her mind wanders to her talk with Folar.  Nice enough guy, and someone Zen definitely enjoyed talking with, but well, humans are usually very self absorbed, and Folar defiantely exemplified those traits.  She liked him well enough though. 

 _So wizards don’t have any magic when they are born…_ Zen watches the fire slowly roast mean as she thinks. She remembers a couple of talks she had with Tamaril in Burok Torn while he was teaching her the “language of magic” as he called it.  He taught her some and told her a little bit about being a wizard, but he didn’t talk about it that much.  _They study “Spellbooks” to learn how to cast magic spells like I do but they have to study their little “spellbook” every day to be able to.  Then they can only cast the spells they put in their mind for that day like Dhal’es only he can spend his power to heal instead.  They also research and make new spells up.  They choose the exile that I had forced upon me.  Why is that? I guess I just don’t understand._  Zen shakes her head slowly.  _So why do wizards not like “sorcerers” as they call people like me?_ Zen sips idly at her glass of ale and Einkill speaks still about the Stormside area and such.

 _Is it because they have to study to be able to do what comes naturally to us?_ Zen wonders.  _Hmmm…maybe they are a little bit envious of that power…otherwise why would they choose to follow arcane ways when they don’t really have to?  But then they might just think sorcerers don’t know enough because we don’t study books like they do and maybe think we’re not learned…_ Zen shakes her head.  _Nah, I think they covet the power that comes naturally to me.  If only they knew what a curse it was most of the time._ Zen smiles and takes another bite of the wonderful peppered fish that the cook has prepared this night, no doubt with Einkill’s input.  _It was a curse until I met people who cared about me._

Zen watches as Draxus devours yet another plate of food.  When that thing hurt him, she felt a bit of her own life drain away…but maybe that was necessary when something as close as what she had made Draxus become got hurt like that.  She was just thankful Dhal’es was there and could bring him back to her. 

She looks around the Inn, such a nice place, much more color than that one in Temple City.  _Another thing I wonder…why do all the sorcerers live in the Harbor City when they are offered a place in the Temple City at the Guild?_ Zen ponders this new thought.  Then she takes another bite, this one particulary strong with some flavor…like ale almost, and she takes another drought of her own light ale. _Maybe it has more to do with politics…as it seems only rich people are in the Temple City. Maybe the Sorcerers of Mithril, even the List Mistress Nabila Silverheart, feel like they should be close to the “real” people of the city.  Those people who live in that great city around the feet of the golem, do they even know or care what goes on here in the Harbor City?  Do they know and care about the people who might never get to see this beacon of hope that Corean brought to the lands?  Its like two completely different towns… Its like the great Paladins and Wizards have too much else on their minds to worry about the people, but does this seem right?_ Zen sighs heavily.  She really cannot believe that Mithril is so divided now that she is here.  This is the great city of Hope she’s heard so much about?  All she’s seen are poor and rich separated by an almost unbreechable wall.  She wonders if the Paladins like things this way.  _Speaking of Paladins…I yet wonder about D’ahtine…I haven’t any luck, but he could be here…I’ll ask Tendra tomorrow…maybe as a Shadow Guild member that’s been here a while she’ll know some information.  If not maybe I can ask my new friend Folar…_

Zen feels a contented feeling and sees that Draxus has finally filled himself and gone to sleep.  She looks about and sees that Dhal’es has gone on up to his room for the night.  Einkill still eats, complimenting the cook all the way.  She sees Corgan over by the small fire, and she vaguely rubs the bruise on her chest.  She glances down and notes that it has formed in the image of the splayed hand.  _So that’s what she meant.  She doesn’t want me to be a target while on Stormside every day…_ She glances up in time to see Corgan watching her with a vaguely curious look.  She smiles and gets up and says good night to all and heads upstairs.  How she wishes she could tell them everything…let them know that she knows as they do the love and devotion to the gods…  But she’ll never do that, as it would endanger them to no end.  Dusk has come, and she has a prayer to offer to her great and powerful mistress for this day since she has found herself among others of the Faithful. 

She puts Draxus down and hides herself in shadow and offers her prayers for the evening.  She comes back and sees Draxus is stirring.  She plays with him after removing all of her assorted magical and mundane items and sits in her simple casting clothes.  She just knows that Draxus is improving greatly at flying.  She’s sure of it, one day he’ll fly like a bird!  After a while she settles back after feeding him a tidbit or two and letting him sleep and enters her sleeping state.  She dreams but this night, there is something different about her dreaming…

She sees herself sleeping there and then a shadowy figure appears and very quickly with the grace and agility of a cat, casts some dust over her form, and she hears a whisper in a male voice, “That took guts in Mullis Town; impressive.”  When she awakes from her sleep she remembers this part of her dreaming, and feels blessed as she has once before…  Her heart leaps.  She knows.  Mullis Town was a place where she tested her limits and proved to herself her own fearlessness and ability.  She knows that she has been commended by the highest source there is for her.  Her prayers this night will surely be full.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

More Thoughts in Mithril

 

      _A Dragon, huh?_ Zen eyes Draxus even more curiously than ever.  _A creature of high intelligence that can speak and fly.  When will you do those things?_   Right now he’s chasing some flying bug that has come in through the window of the Inn.  Draxus was always in motion.  Now Zen thought even more than ever of him as a child.  _I wonder if there is anything else I’m supposed to do with a dragon?  Are they like regular children?_   She sighs and watches him jump around the room.  _Theodonnas I trust.  I believe him.  He knew that you would get big like your mother was, but he said it would take a long time._

      Her mind is not on sleeping much this night.  Not after what all has happened.  That poor girl…dying like that must have been horrible.  She breathed an curse in dwarven.  “Why couldn’t I help her?” she says out loud.  “Who deceived me so as to make me see what was untrue?”  She doesn’t know who she’s talking to but she doesn’t care.  She’s not feeling very happy at the moment.  She makes a fist and pounds it into her leg.  “Why?  I saved Dhal’es.  I should have done something else.  There was more to it…the shadow magic was there I felt it.  But from who?  Who fooled me?”  She stands slowly and paces back and forth in the room.  _Belsameth I know was the reason, they were followers of her, the circle on the wall said as much…but why do that to that girl?  I know that Belsameth and Madriel are sisters, but why does it interest my Lady?  Maybe she just likes the battles between them.  But still, why do they kill people in such a way. I don’t understand._ “I don’t understand,” she whispers out load.  “I know that the dark gods take sacrifice, but I didn’t think human sacrifice was what was necessary.”  She paces more and more.  Draxus eventually stops playing with the fly and watches her intently, as if he knows exactly what she’s doing and how she feels.

      “Maybe its this city.  Rules and laws and this and that chafe against me.  I know it is in good intentions, but the life in Harbor City is so much more fun than that stuffy old Temple City.”  She thinks on the small temple to Drendari she’s visited.  “Why do those stuffy old paladins lash out against our kind Mistress?  Why don’t they realize we help them more than hinder them?”  She’s saddened by this thought.   “Though I much rather see your shrine in Harbor City than any grand temple in Temple city!” her voice is a bit brighter.  But there is a darkness in her mind this night.  She tries to push it away and repeats what the preist said.  “Wherever a Shadow lies, it means that there is a light somewhere nearby… I must remember that.  It is true…so true.”

      Zen looks in the mirror and into her eyes.  Their vibrant blue color is true, and now, after Corgan told her about the elf he saw, she understands.  Forsaken elves have _black_ eyes.  What a sad thing…to have one’s god die and be forever alone…to not have that source of power around you during your life.  “I can’t imagine it, Mistress, no I surely can’t, to not be able to touch you…”  She looks down at Draxus.  He still watches her.

      “Was there anything else I could have done, my love?  Was there anything I should have done?  I did all I could, what is it that I am missing?  Where is the connection?  I feel…like I missed something.  Something…”  She looks into the mirror again and stares into her own eyes.  “To be forsaken by all would be like death…” she whispers once again to no one in particular.  “Good Madriel, I hope that young girl’s soul reached your arms…take care of her sweet healer…” she says next, her heart heavy.

      “Why must it be like this…all death…with so many titanspawn threatening, why would any person want to take a life?  Maybe I truly don’t understand it…maybe I never will.”  Zen wanders to the bed once more.  She sighs and wraps herself in shadow and offers her nightly prayer to her Mistress in hopes for good training the next weeks.  She thanks her for her Darkvision that she has full use of now.  She thanks her for many things and then lets Draxus curl up beside her as she slips into her far off place once again. 

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

     

**  
**

# Gaining Dragon Flight

 

Zen had finally mastered the spell that the wand carried, the polymorphing spell.  She sat and thought about it.  _That spell takes a lot of power.  I wonder if there is a way to do something like Gnorm did without spending that much power.  Gnorm sure came in handy since he had those great wings that he flew with._  She watched Drax try to fly.  He was doing really well lately.  He was hopping around and doing all sorts of things.  _I think I’ll try to be like that…being able to fly on those wings would be quite handy now that Gnorm is gone._ She took off her cloak and her top, as she had no idea how the wings would form or what would happen at all.

She sat and felt her power.  _I don’t want to spent that much power.  I want to make my body change…a little.  Just enough to fly…like Gnorm did…_ She sat still, sliding into her meditative trance where she felt for the loose strains of power that surrounded her like filaments.  During the times when she was discovering her new powers, it was like being somewhere else almost; the world around her disappeared.  She was inside herself and the energy of her power surrounded her in a comforting blanket.  The part of the energy that was not yet harnessed was loose around her, not cohesive.  She reached out with will and grasped the free strands.  She began the process of folding the strains of power into what she wanted.  She muttered to herself as she sat in the room.  Her hands moved absently in front of her.

This was a little different than usual.  Some of the time she had a point of reference, like with the polymorphing spell.  The wand had showed her the mechanics.  Some spells that she’d seen, she could emulate the motions of the caster and reach out and find the spell she wanted.  Sometimes, she sits and the spell would simply come to her out of the nothingness, like most of her early spells.  This time, she was consciously trying to make a specific effect.  She felt the energies free flowing around her.  It was always like this when she had loose powers.  She was confused briefly and then she found her consciousness pulling at the strands.  She pulled and finally she felt the words were right.  Her hands made the motions that she felt would empower it.  She felt something and she opened her eyes and looked from left to right.

On her back set a pair of large wings.  _I wanted wings like Gnorm…but this will do just fine…maybe even better…_ she though as she smiled. She had wings all right.  They looked like Draxus’s wings though and not Gnorm’s, only larger.  The wing span was probably about ten feet from side to side, she estimated.  They were the same color as Drax’s, a brownish red color.  She flexed them and managed to lift off of the ground a few inches. She’d have to practice a bit to get used to them.  They were strong, to be sure…and she could certainly be effective in looking out over stuff using that along with the shadow form spell.  She looked at her back in the mirror.  She nodded.  Her top would fit fine, the straps would not interfere with the spell, and her clock would set between them quite well.  She turned to Draxus who sat staring at her, his small head cocked to the side.  “Well, baby, now I can fly with you when you learn to fly…” she said softly to him with a smile.  “I can fly too…” she smiled at Drax who was looking at her intently.  “I can fly on Dragon wing too…with this spell…Dragonflight…”

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

Angelsgate

 

[Zen’s mind is on Amalthea more and more as their time in Durover progresses.  She’s become more and more quite and thoughtful.  Sometimes she goes into song at random points, songs written during the Druid War in her own high elven language.]

 

      Zen said nothing as the bodies were gathered.  This was too familiar for her liking.  Far too familiar.  She helped them gather the bodies into the houses to build the pyre, though her limited strength meant she could only carry small ones, the children mostly, and the men and dwarves handled the larger adults.  As they worked, Zen remained silent, responding to anyone who spoke to her with a nod or a shrug and her eyes focused somewhere else, Amalthea’s streets to be exact.  Amalthea’s streets had been just as dead at the end, and maybe even more so, considering there had been many more that could die in them than here.  Draxus was quite and watched mostly.  He was very confused, but Zen did not have the strength to tell him what was happening just yet.

The end of the day came, Zen never once speaking to another besides Draxus, but then Draxus was a part of her more than anything.  Dhal’es told her that he would perform the funeral and it was up to her to light the fires for the dead.  All told, there were more than 1500 bodies there.  Zen still had not said a word, and not a tear had fallen from her eyes.  It was as if she remained in a perpetual state of shock thoughout the day as they used the horses to drag the bodies and carried them on litters to the places they would light on fire.  She had not been at a funeral pyre like this in such a long time, but her mind still held the smell, that aweful smell, like it was yesterday she had last seen one.

When they had finally finished and the funarl was begun, she listened halfway as Dhal’es spoke the words.  Then he turned to her and gave her a look of expectancy.  He did not really expect her to do what she did, but it worked just the same.  Draxus sat tightly on her shoulder, his head cradled around her neck.  She began to sing instead of fireballing the structures.  She sang the Funeral Dirge of the Druid War, a song in high elven that she had heard long ago and had sang long ago.  The woman whom Dhal had saved looked to him and said that the song was so sad and beautiful, and asked what Zen sang about.  Dhal, who knew what the words were simply shook his head, tears in his own eyes at the words.  Though he could remember almost nothing about the war, Zen had rescued him toward the end of the war, he knew what had taken place as well as she did.  Dhal though did not have as many memories of the death and destruction that Zen had seen throughout the entire war.

As she sang the words she remembered the first time she heard it.  There had been two hundred and twenty seven killed defending a breech in the city wall and there was no time for burial, and frankly, there was no place either, so a fire was built.  An old elven woman san the Dirge for the first time there and Zen was enraptured by the words.  The woman’s three children all were inside the pyre that she was singing for.  This touched Zen to no small extent.  A few years later, Zen layed the same old elven woman’s body on a pyre with over five hundred other women, children, and men, and Zen sang the song again.   Somehow she remembered all the words.  Unfortunately, she sang it many times after that as the forces crashed into Amalthea.  It was along with those memories that the tears came. 

Like a flood she hadn’t felt in a long time, as the words came flawlessly from her mouth the tears flowed. Her tears were from Amalthea and from Durover.  When she was done, she began to fireball the bodies.  Any tears that were on her face soon evaporated from the heat she generated.  It took so many that when she was done, there was a good fifteen feet around her where no one was standing.  They had edged away from her as her own body heat increased. She smiled a bit.  Even Einkill, Corgan, and Dhal’es had moved away from her.  She moved away back toward their sleeping area but she dallied, and did not take a direct route.

"What is the other place you're thinking about Momma?" Drax asked her as the day wore on.  Zen tried to smile but only answered,  "Amalthea, it was my home.... I’ll tell you about it some day when it doesn't hurt so much as today...."  Zen looked away, and cleaned herself of the soot and ash that had gotten on her from the pyre.  "I feel strange for you Momma.  What is this feeling?" Draxus asked her in childlike innocence.  Zen sighed deeply and smiled a strained smile.   "You will learn soon to name it, love...  Remember this.  What you see here should never happen.  What I lived should never happen.  Saddess is deep here, for many reasons.  This is what I and the others want to stop.  I cannot explain it all.  I wish you didn't have to see this yet, but this is the world we live in and one day maybe people like us and Dhal, Corgan and Einkill can change it.  We want to desperately.  Love will overide all, one day, and take this saddness away..." she told him silently.  "Those who killed and those who did killing.  Looked same to me.  I do not understand." Draxus asked her.  "And why did they not come wake back like I did?"  Zen smiled.  He was referring to being Resuscitated by Dhal’es.

"Well, this is the problem of our world, my love.  Sometimes you cannot tell who is good and who is bad.  They were all humans, and I know you've noticed that they are different from me.  Humans wage wars on each other, all for the sake of land.  A man in a place called Callastia wants more land and more power, so he is trying to take it from these people.  He is ruthless and kills all who get in his way.  I know it makes no sense, and humans don't live as long as I do, or as you I don't think, and I think its strange to waste such a short life in such a way as to die for land that is not yours, but the soldiers that the King in Callastia send do just that.  King Virduk is his name, and his reign started long ago.  He is also the reason I think of Amalthea right now, you know.  This is much like what happened there, and once again Virduk was part of the reason.  He did some bad things then as well.  They did not come wake like you did because Dhal'es doesn't have infinate power.  He woke one of them and tried to waken another, but it was too late for him.  He's one Priest and can only do so much...it is sad, but true, love.”  She looked at him and as best as she could tell, he was thinking. 

"Can't we just go away and get away from the bad people, Momma?  Can't someone else do what you do?  I don't want you to not wake back." He said with sudden fervor.  She reached down and hugged him tight, close to tears.  "No, don't you worry.  There is not way that anyone will take me away from you and no way anyone will take you away from me.  I'll make sure of it.  You saw how I went up to get away from those bad men.  I made sure they couldn't even hit me if they tried.  I can do a lot of things like that, and I will keep mayself safe.  We only saved a few people, love, but if we hadn't been here, they would have all died.  I know what it is like to feel like they do, lost and hopeless.  I need to help them.  But I won't ever not wake back.  Dhal'es will make sure of that and so will the others."  How could she ever tell him that that was her greatest fear?  That one day she would die and leave him alone?  She couldn’t…not now or ever, but he knew her heart.  As the bodies burned he said with distaste, "That smell, I hate that smell.  It is awful.  They stink when they die and burn."  Zen smiled.  “I know.  Its horrible, I know.  I’ve smelled it too many times.”

Zen offered her prayers that night, tinged with sadness.   She thanked her goddess for all the aid she had granted her.  She prayed though that the Mistress would aid her against the forces of Durover.  She prayed that there might be someone else like them to aid these poor people.  She then headed toward the temple.  Zen turned and looked back around at the remains of the town, Angelsgate was no more than a husk now.  Its people dead, its soul gone.  She said, slowly, in her own language, “Angelsgate.  May all your people have found their way to the Great Angel, Madriel.”  She then went and thought for a long time about Amalthea and told Draxus a few things about what it was like before the war.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

 

 

      Zen sat on the wall of the tower, her feet dangling in the air.  The wizard’s tower…it had become _her_ tower.  It was so ironic; she had a tower in this place.  No one came here to bother her.  No one tried to tell her anything about what she was.  They didn’t care that she was a sorcerer, and not a wizard.  All they cared was she was _here_ to help them.  It didn’t matter that she wielded the power of Mesos.  She did it for their good and they appreciated it.  That was more than she got from other people at times.  She kicked her legs and contemplated this place.  These people were strong, but no matter how strong, how can you hold a fort with sixty men against ten thousand?  She held serious misgivings about all this…but she had the right.  She feared for her life, and for these people’s lives, for all of them… 

      Draxus had laid down beside her and napped, as it was afternoon, and the weather was beginning to feel a hint of coolness, but not bad yet.  She knew the cold would bother him, no doubt.  She smiled.  Wait till Tendra sees you again, she’ll think you’re a liability…  Zen smiled.  Not that she had been wrong, at the time Draxus was quite the liability, but now he was quite useful and helpful.  He’d grow one day, to be the size of his mother…

      Zen played with her hair idlely.  She saw one of the men patrolling the battlements stop and stare at her.  She couldn’t have possibly climbed to where she was sitting…which she had not; her climbing was a funny thing, as she carried not much strength to allow her to do that.  She’d used a spell of course to get up here, as there was no way to get on top of the tower from inside…at least not where she was sitting.  She smiled at him and waved.  He stared for a moment and when one of the other men walked his way he pointed her out.  She laughed and waved at him too.  They kind of stared for a minute, then shook their heads and moved on their patrol, glancing back now and then.  She straightened her cloak underneath her.  She’d taken it off and laid it down, and sat leisurely on top of the tower, out of the way of the world…and all its horrors.  She didn’t mind the looks and stares, actually she’d gotten quite used to them.  But here…there was another look, one of awe.

      Whether it was from pure amazement that they were Godsends, or from the fact that they were powerful…it was unclear.  But it was strange.  Coming from Mithril where they were just _there._   At least in Burok Torn they had been taken very seriously and thanked for what they did, though they didn’t ask for that thanks, it was nice any way.  At least they weren’t put on trial for helping in Burok Torn…  Her mind went back over their time in Burok Torn again.  It was nice in some ways, even though being underground all the time was a bit disconcerting.  She, like always, was the oddity.  And here she was, still in the same situation, an oddity, but here there was a different feel.  These people needed her; in fact they wanted her to stay here with them if they survived the siege.  Zen felt her heart swell at the thought.  These people wanted her because she could help them.

      She smiled and switched positions, she laid on her stomach and put her hands under her chin and looked out toward the gate, toward the direction the army lay in wait to strike like some viper of Mormo.  She contemplated what their intentions were, and when they were going to institute them.  She knew deep in her soul that if they had their way they would murder every person in this fort.  No matter what they said, they would kill them, just like they did in Angelsgate.  There was no pity, none at all.  They had no mercy for those who lived here.  Zen knew their intention all to well.  There was ten thousand men out there.  Winter was coming fast, and if they were still out there come winter they would die out there if they didn’t take the fort.  And they couldn’t let them live because all those men would not be well in the fort with some three hundred women and children…to be sure they would kill them all rather than mess with them.

      Zen felt the heat rising in her face… and her power rising in her.  She squelched it quickly.  She wanted to just burn them all for what they had done and what they intended to do to these people.  What right did they have?  These people had done nothing but live here, and Virduk wanted the land so they had to die.  It was so wrong, what of their freedom to live?  These people would take it from them.  Zen pounded her slight fist on the top of the tower, her tower.  Draxus moved a little in his sleep as he soaked up the afternoon rays of sunshine.  Zen smiled, but made sure to reposition to keep the sun from her eyes, as it hurt them more now as she grew closer to the Mistress.  She smiled.  She’d heard that when one of the Shadow reaches power, they receive the blessings of the Mistress in full, and Zen knew in her heart that that would be soon…  She smiled now, thinking of better things.  She remained on the tower, long after the sun began to slip low.  Draxus woke a couple times and asked when they were going down, and she answered that they would be soon, after dusk set.  She heard him grumble about her mind talking with someone else.  She smiled and waited for twilight.

      The guards still watched her now and then, and she stood, pulling her cloak on, pinning the silver rose clasp.  She touched it and sighed, pining greatly for her old mentor.  _Aramil, where have you gone to now?_ She thought, and before she knew it was playing with the dagger that also held the rose emblem.  She sat down and pulled the cloak around her and hid herself among it, pulling the cowl down and began to speak to her Mistress.

      _Oh, Mistress, hear me now, above all that I can see.  Twilight has come to me so I may seek your counsel.  These people…they don’t deserve to die like this, but what more can I do?  I ply my magic and help them all I can.  Madriel, the Redeemer appears to be on our side, but then so does her sister Belsameth…So what is happening, Mistress?  I’m confused by all this, I must confess, but maybe I’m not seeing everything.  These people use the most ruthless means and use undead and fiendish creatures to slaughter these innocents…What else can I do?  We four are doing our best, and the people know it…but how do we stand against ten thousand or more?  What if they have other minions we don’t know about?  Mistress, I just hope that I make it through and help these people the best I can, because they need it.  This army…they would kill them all, and even if they were left alive, they would take away their freedoms to do what they will in life.  I just cannot allow that…but what more can I do?  I do not expect you to answer, my Mistress, of course, but I just wish to tell you my heart, not that you do not already know it as such.  May  your shadow blanket us, my mistress, as I am here to seek your glory._

 _Thanks to Corean, for your strength and fire, to Madriel for your mercy and blessing, to Tanil for your courage and skill, to Hedrada for your judgment and knowledge, to Enkili for your luck and chaos, to Belsemeth for your aid and the night, to Chardun for your strategy and tactics, to Vangel for your ferocity and battlelust, and thanks also to Goran for your watchful eye and your heart.  I do what I do for you all, and fight in your name._ Zen finished and stood slowly and pushed her hood back.  She gathered Draxus, who was grumbling about his condition of being hungry.  She cast the spell and floated all the way down to the ground.  She sighed and figured she’d find something to eat around here somewhere.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

 

A Night in Fort Anvule – Thinking and Dreaming

 

      Zen sat still and watched as silently the twilight hour slipped from the sky and night descended on the world around her.  She sits in a place where she’ll be left alone for a while, but she knows she’s visible to the guards.  But then they’ve gotten used to her strange habits these few nights that have been peaceful.  Now she’s chosen a nice spot in the courtyard that is silent and void of people as night descends.  She’s not trying to hide, but she’s sure she won’t be bothered, watched perhaps, but not bothered.  She spread her cloak on the ground and layed on top of it, with Draxus curled up beside her.  She looks up and smiles to the night.  Sweet darkness, she thought, you’ve always been my friend, you’ve always been my comfort when no one else could offer it.  She watched and her mind began to wander.  How these people looked up to her…how they cared for her and wanted her to stay because she was strong and could…  How things had changed since the days she left her father’s house to head into the streets of Amalthea before the war began…  The stars were out and Zen’s mind was not on current matters.

      _She felt the hand reach out and grasp her by the upper arm too hard.  Zen bit her lip, knowing exactly who was there.  She really wasn’t in the mood to deal with him.  She turned around and looked up, as he was a good foot and a half taller than she was.  She stared into his soulless pale blue eyes.  “I’ve told you before, I’ll tell you again, Igra, the answer is no.”  The taller man smiled, his teeth yellow, and his breath putrid when he spoke.  “You’d rather starve, wretch, than share yourself with me?” he asked, leaning down, placing his face closer to hers. “I can offer you a warm bed and hot food through the winter and you won’t take my offer?”  Zen swallowed, doing her best to show this man no fear, despite the fact she wanted to shake.  She felt his fingernails burrowing into her flesh and she imagined that her arm was white from the pressure he was exerting there, and would probably be bruised from his grip.  “Yes,” she pronounced in a strong voice and ripped her arm from his grasp.  It took everything she had not to cry out as his fingernails scratched bloody marks across her upper arm._

_She turned and walked away from him, her head up, and ignoring the rivulets of blood that dripped down her arm, her pride would not allow other wise.  From behind her she heard his course laughter.  “You’ll die on the streets little one!  You’ll never make it without someone like me!  You are WEAK! Look at you!  You already look like an unfed child, you can’t even steal your dinner can you!”  Zen didn’t stop, she didn’t care what he said, all that mattered is he couldn’t see the tears coursing down her face.  She turned a corner and didn’t hear his voice following her, so she leaned against the wall, and put a hand over the stripes of blood on her arm and heaved a breath.  That bastard, she thought.  To think I’d entertain bedding with him, whether he would feed me or not…  Zen was indeed weakened somewhat from her lack of food lately, but she’d never stoop to THAT low…never._

_She ripped a strip off her meager cloak and tied it around her still bleeding arm, and used her sleeve to wipe her tears away.  She’d been out here for three months now, and the people that took pity on her at first for being a lost child had stopped.  Winter was on its way for one, and they didn’t have the food to spare, and they also had lost interest in the little elven girl…though by human standards she was not child, by her own people’s she was.  And she could pass somewhat for a child if she needed, as her hair was cropped but covered her ears.  She’d done that herself with a dagger she’d found a few weeks ago, and she was no where near developed yet, but it was enough that if she wasn’t careful to cover her gender she’d get in more trouble than she’d like with the ruffians.  She had found that at first people took pity on her because she was the “little elven girl” but then it didn’t matter, and she attracted the attention of less than favorable males.  She’d taken to acting like a boy, like one of the little ruffian thieves, when others viewed her, another reason she chopped her blonde hair.  She smeared dirt and such on her face to try to cover her feminine features, but it was difficult as she was an elf, and her bone structure would have looked feminine even if she was a male, so passing for a human boy was hard at times._

_Most people didn’t pay any attention to her though, and that was the way she liked it.  She only wanted to be left alone any more.  Igra had taken to periodically trying to motivate her into coming to his hovel and staying with him since he figured out that she was a girl.  She tried to avoid him for fear that one of these times he wouldn’t let her go…_

_She sat down and played with the sand and pulled the cowl of her dingy cloak over her and felt the comfort of this dark corner come over her.  She had found the shadows beaconed to her, and she found that if she was careful, people she didn’t want to see her didn’t when she hid in the shadows.  Something comforted her in that fact.  She kept herself there and watched the feet of the people as they moved about.  Every once in a while, someone would kick dirt at her and she’d hear laughter, but she ignored it, as her cowl was over her eyes.  She’d gotten good at ignoring that kind of thing.  She watched because she knew what went on here, and she hadn’t eaten in days and needed something.  And she wasn’t about to take Igra up on his offer.  No way in all the hells of record would she do that.  Soon she saw what she was waiting for.  Five pair of grubby, dirty bare feet.  There they were…she’d get them for stealing her begging cup last week.  She smirked, sitting very still she waited._

_A pair of nice feet, well made but fancy boots upon them, and another pair of feet, delicate and covered with a fine pair of slippers, walked beside the booted feet.  Their target, no doubt, Zen thought.  She was getting good at this.  She’d marked their mark by his feet.  She smiled, to no end amused by this fact, but she still played with the sand, as if she was some child with half a mind, and waited.  Suddenly five pair of grubby bare feet surrounded the nice boots and the fine slippers.  There was quite a bit of childish calling and begging for money and two pouches fell to the ground by the feet.  In the scuffle of the feet moving around, Zen pulled a pouch from her hip, very slowly and slid it over toward the direction of the feet.  She went back to playing in the sand.    The pouch was a fine one, one that Zen was loath to part with, but she knew that it was the only way she was going to get the grubby little boys to take it, rather than one of the other pouches.  One set of feet moved away and grabbed the pouch from under him, and he reached for the plain leather pouch that was nearly empty, but his eye was caught by the pouch of fine make that bulged and he grasped it instead and ran.  The other five apparently had gotten a couple copper out of the couple and ran off in different directions.  They began to walk, and Zen stood, and shambled to the pouch that lay on the ground.  She dumped the contents into a pocket, and stumbled after the couple._

_“Sir?  Lady?” she said weakly.  The man turned around and looked at the figure coming toward him.  She held up his pouch and said, “That boy…he dropped this after he dumped the money into another one…did he steal it from you?”  The man reached instinctively to his pouch, which wasn’t there, it was in Zen’s hands, empty and with the straps cut.  She made the saddest face she could.  “They steal from everyone that comes down here, they five come and surround and then cut the strings…I’ve seen ‘em do it many times, m’lord…”  she crept closer offering the empty pouch, hoping the coins didn’t make noise in her pocket.  The man looked at the woman, both were human.  He snatched the pouch from her hand and Zen cringed back.  “How do I know you’re not in league with them, wretch?” he said quietly, apparently not wanting to draw the guards.  “Look at her, she’s so starved she can barely walk…those boys were well fed, they are thieves,” the lady said, her crisp, clean blond hair framing a white face.  Zen held her hands over her chest and looked at him as though she was afraid of being struck.  The woman, who wasn’t tall compared with the man, but Zen was still shorter than she and Zen slumped down so she looked shorter, kneeled down and touched her face._

_Zen looked into the woman’s eyes as she pushed the cowl off her face.  “You’re an elf…” she said touching her ears.  The man looked at the woman, “Leave the wretch alone, she’s worthless, probably another thief like the rest…” he said pulling the woman to her feet.  They walked off and Zen grabbed the hood and pulled it over her head.  She had to find out how much copper and silver she got…  She moved at a shuffling pace down the wall and dropped into a cellar window and checked and no one was home.  She fished out the coins that were in her pocket and was amazed.  That was why his pouch wasn’t full.  There was five gold pieces and six silver pieces…and one silvery piece that Zen knew as platinum…her father had been a merchant and she’d seen those before.  She clutched the twelve coins to her chest and smiled.  If she could keep them from being stolen, she’d make it through the winter._

_She wrapped the platinum piece in a cloth and put it in the chest of a dirty old doll that she carried with her.  She took the gold and put a piece in each pocket she had, and did the same with the silver.  She then climbed out of the cellar and made her way to the market to get a meal.  She went to various counters and bout a bundle of cheese and hard meats and then put it in a little beltpouch that she hid beneath the folds of her various robes.  Indeed, the money lasted her all winter.  She slept the nights away in various cellars, never the same one twice, for fear the owners would find her a drive her out.  And thus she made her first winter on the streets.  Then summer came and she was indeed better at surviving than she was before._

_Then as she sat one afternoon, watching the people go by in an alleyway she heard a rough voice, “Well, little one, survived the winter somehow I see…”  She looked up to see Igra standing over her, his eyes just as soulless as they had been before the winter.  “What do you want with me?” she asked.  “You know what I want.  Had enough of the street life yet, wench?” his voice sounded different somehow.  She stood slowly.  “I’m not going anywhere with you…you know that.  My answer’s not changed…” she said.  He stepped forward.  “You’ll come with me this time…or else…”  She shook her head and smirked.  “I’m not that stupid.  I’m not going anywhere with the likes of you,” she said backing up slowly, moving to move away from him as quickly as she could._

_He stepped forward quicker than she’d have ever given him credit to move.  He snatched her easily up into the air, with a hand on each of her upper arms.  His teeth were still yellow, and his breath was still putrid as he spoke once again.  “I’m amazed by the fact that ye still live, little one.  Ya have more to ya than I thought, wench.”  He smiled and shook her violently until she thought her insides were going to be shifted by the force.  Then he slammed her into the wall behind her.  Somehow, she managed to stiffen her neck and not have her head slam into it and get knocked out, surely bringing some untold fate upon herself.  She did bit her lip and blood trickled down her chin.  “Put…me…down…” she said through clenched teeth.  Her life over the winter had not been easy and she didn’t feel like putting up with this anymore today than she had before winter began.  He leaned forward until his face nearly met hers and smiled and asked, “Why should I?”_

_Zen, who was not strong in any way, knew the problem she faced.  He was much bigger than she was, and much stronger.  On the surface it seemed like a no win situation for her.  But, she knew the time of the guard’s patrols better than he did, and she knew that the afternoon patrol would be walking past her position in about five or so minutes.  But until then, she has to deal with the brute herself.  “Because I am not a wench for your entertainment, if you want that, go to the local tavern and buy one for the night!” she spat the words in utter distaste, her voice relaying her feelings on the issue.  He slammed her into the wall again, this time her head bounced slightly as she was caught off guard.  She saw stars and barely kept her consciousness as he pressed her into the wall.  She could feel the places where his hands were bruising.  She was going to be nice and black and blue by the time this was over.  She didn’t understand, he’d been a nuisance for a long time, but this was the first time he’d ever actually gotten this physically violent with her._

_“You’re hurting me!” she said in a cracked voice.  He smiled.  “I don’t care…”  She swallowed hard, realizing how bad this could get.  “You…are coming…with me this time…”  He seemed a tad distracted as she realized the reason for this all.  He was put off by the fact he couldn’t bully her like every other street wretch out here.  “Leave me alone!” she screamed at him and began kicking him in the shins furiously.  He let go of one of her arms and slapped her hard with the back of his hand, making her see stars again.  She felt the blood as his gaudy ring cut her.  He placed his hand back on her arm, not having dropped her a bit holding her with one hand, she was so light._

_She stared at him with wide eyes and spit in his face.  She didn’t care anymore.  Suddenly it didn’t matter.  Something as bright as the fresh pain in her face had went off in her mind.  Whatever he did to her didn’t matter, because she had her soul locked up tight in the neat little corner of her that he couldn’t touch and nothing could change that fact.  He stared at her a moment and then was shortly dropped and a flurry of pain assaulted her as he rapidly landed a series of painful blows on her chest and face, one that ignited a fire in her side, and she really thought that it was fate punishing her for being like she was, a witch.  She heard though a voice that she couldn’t make out and she pulled herself in a ball, whatever meager resistance that it was against his fury, but she waited and nothing more happened.  She flinched away as a hand reached for her face.  “Shhh…its all right…we’ve taken care of your ‘friend’ now…he won’t be givin you any problems now…” a male voice said and she looked up into the face of one of the patrolmen.  She looked over and her “friend” lay on the ground, the second patrolmen holding a sap in his hand over the body._

_The man pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood off her face and with it much of the dirt.  “There, that’s better, you’re gonna be okay…” he stopped as he pushed away her hair from her ears.  He cocked his head to the side.  “An elf, out here?” he said, stopping his ministrations briefly, but he continued after a second.  Her breath was shallow though, and he noted this.  He reached for her ribs, but she pulled away.  “Come now, I’ve gotta feel  if your have any broken ribs there…”  She nodded and looked away from him and relaxed her arms as he reached his hands to her ribs to see if she’d had one broken, he felt for a minute and she sucked in her breath hard as he touched her right side.  He moved to pull her clothes away and she once again flinched away trying to keep him from doing this.  “Hey, I think you’ve got one broke, let me see it so I can tell if its worse than that or not…”_

_Zen faced a dilemma now, because she really had worked hard to hide the fact she was a female, because that was dangerous out here.  She was visibly shaken by it but she relaxed as he began to peel away the layers of clothes.  She looked away to make sure no one was watching, and none were, not even the other patrolman.  He stopped as she felt his hands reach her skin finally.  He looked at her and she turned to face him because he wasn’t moving.  “You’re not a boy…” he said.  “No, I’m not a boy,” she said, her voice confirming the fact as if her physiology did not.  He blinked a couple times and then pulled the clothes away from her side and pressed around her ribs.  “Bruised badly, and broken I think, but I don’t think its hurt your breathing,” he pronounced finally and pulled her clothes around her._

      He turned to the other man.  “Take him in,” he said.  The other man looked at him confused.  “For beating up a wretch?  Since when we take in people for beatin on the beggar boy thieves around here?  He probably took his money is all…”  The man before Zen stood and walked toward him a couple steps.  For some reason he didn’t go all the way to him, his fists clenched at his side.  Zen couldn’t see his face, but imagined his teeth were clenched.  “I don’t think he was beating on HER for thieving, I think he was trying to get something out of her that she didn’t want to give him…” he said and turned back to her, afraid she would run off or something.  Truth be told, she wanted to, but the pain that was blooming in her side was not going to let her run off.  He turned back to the other guard.  “But she’s a street wretch.  She likely sells herself at the local taverns…what does it matter to us?” the other guard said, shrugging offhandedly.  The guard straightened his back and she again felt that if she could see his mouth, his teeth would be clenched.  “You are as dense as a basket of rocks.  She’s got so much filth on her face and clothes that she’s obviously trying to hide the fact that she’s a girl, fool.”  The second man shrugged again.  “So she don’t wash, not unusual, I’ve spent the night with many of ‘em that had to wash up before I’d go in with ‘em…” he said shrugging.  “I don’t see the point of taking this one in.”  Zen felt tears welling.  She couldn’t believe this man’s callousness.  If they left him here and he woke up and found her…

_“She’s cleaner than you under her clothes, you dimwit.  Look at his shins, and look at her, her arms are bruised and so is her face.”  The second man put up his sap.  “This is stupid, she’s just another wench.”  The first one moved forward and grasped the second one by the shirt and picked him a good two inches off the ground.  “Take him in, charge him, and throw him in the lower levels with the others like him, that is an order.”  He then dropped him to his feet, and the second one promptly answered a curt, “Yes, sir…” and picked the man up by feet and started dragging him away.  He turned back to Zen, who was weakly trying to crawl away, not really afraid of him, but in some form feeling like she should be alone.  “Hey, you come back here,” the man said softly and came over and kneeled beside her.  She looked up at him, her eyes shimmering.  He pulled her cowl over her and picked her up carefully.  “Lets get you bandaged up, what is your name, my girl?  I’m Dreone.”  Zen looked at him and whispered, “Zen…”  and feeling safe for the first time in a while, passed into the blackness without another though._

_She woke up sometime later, finding herself in warm bed, stripped of her clothes, and a bandage around her ribs.  She pulled the sheet tight around her chin and tried to sit up but winced at the pain in her side.  “Now, now, you’re safe,” she heard a familiar voice say, and Dreone stepped beside her and sat on the bed, a cup of something hot in his hands.  He set it on the table and helped her sit up in the bed.  She pulled the sheets up around her as she did.  He smiled and handed her the cup.  She drank the warm soup quickly, burning her tongue a bit in the process.  He smiled and began to talk to her and tell her of himself.  They spoke for a long time, though Zen stopped short of revealing who her family was or why she’d been forced out.  She felt very close to him, and stayed until she was healed, and was much healthier than she had been.  Though he thought she was still too thin, even he admitted she looked better now than she had._

_Dreone lived alone in a quaint little place that was above another home.  One had to climb stairs to get to it from the alleyway.  But Zen enjoyed her time with him.  She was left alone most of the time and that was all she really wanted.  She didn’t love him, not really, though she quickly stopped sleeping alone.  She didn’t love anyone.  She couldn’t.  But she stayed quite a while there, sleeping there, and prowling the streets during the days, and sometimes sleeping out there.  Soon, she went back to her old ways, but she would always find her way to Dreone’s home when she was hungry and needed food or comfort or when she was injured from some brawl or some such.  He would take her in every time, and heal her up or feed her, or whatever she needed, and she would stay for a while, then she would leave again.  He asked her many times to stay, be his wife, because he loved her so, but Zen couldn’t, she couldn’t love, because she’d get hurt.  She couldn’t be weak and love.  She had to be strong and never let herself be hurt by people again.  She couldn’t marry this man then have him leave her and make her weak by breaking her heart.  She just couldn’t do that.  Maybe that was a good thing though._

_Years later, she watched Dreone’s body burn on a funeral pyre as she sang a dirge of great sadness.  He died in the war with the rest of them.  And she sang to him as she sang to the old elven woman who sang the dirge the first time she’d heard it.  She sang to them and meant every word she said, the smoke stinging her eyes and the smell of burning bodies filling her senses.  And she had no tears to cry.  They were gone, all of them.  She vowed to be strong from then on, not loving or trusting, not counting on anyone else for anything.  She would be strong on her own…but how could she know that one day her strength would not come from herself?  How could she have known then that her strength would come from her friends more than herself?_

Zen feels a hand drop to her shoulder and she starts and looks up at Einkill, who had seen her siting here, staring off into space at nothing in particular.  “What ye lookin at?” he asks her softly in dwarven.  She smils and staresat the point in space she’d been staring at.  “I dunno, Einkill, I really don’t.  I was just thinkin about some things that happened long ago…maybe even before you were born…” she said smiling at the dwarf, her high voice sounding strange making the dwarven sounds.  Einkill hurmphs and shakes his head at her.  “What good does that do ye?” he asks her curtly.  She reaches out and pats Draxus along the back, he stretches and rolls over to the other side.  She sighs and smiles at the dwarf.  “It proves how much you guys mean to me and how different I am…and how good that is…” she chimes in middle elven, her voice floating over the smooth syllables.  Einkill shakes his head.  “Ah, I’m going to bed, you better too, who knows what the morrow will bring in this place with Calastians knocking on the front gate like this…” He turns and walks away.  “You mean a lot to me, you know…” she says in an elven language that Einkill doesn’t know.  He looks back and looks questioningly at her for a moment then walks on. 

She looks to the sky and sighs again.  “Aramil?  Where are you?” she whispers to the uncaring sky.  “I miss you…and wish you were by my side once more…” she says, tears touching her eyes.  She doesn’t brush them away.  “I miss you, and I miss D’ahtine, and Ryanna, and Tearf’na, and Remshine, and Father…and I even miss mother…maybe one day the gods will see fit for us to meet again…”  She wipes away the tears and smiles at the sky.  “But I am happy now.  Einkill, Corgan and Dhal’es are my family, and Draxus and you Mistress.”  Her voice is smooth and flowing.  She sighs and stands, her silent contemplation done for the eve.  She gathers Draxus and stands, stretching, and receiving a whistle or two from who knows where.  She waves her hand and replaces her cloak over herself and retreats to their room for the eve, where the others already rest.  She sits and trances to a place where things are always like this.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

_  
_

Thoughts on the Battlements – Siege during the Night of Fort Anvule

 

[This takes place toward the end of the siege on Fort Anbule.  Zen has been using all her energies on the Eastern side of the fort where the main gate is to try to keep them from getting in that way.  She cannot see how well she was doing, but she was hoping she had stopped enough of them to make a difference.]

 

Zen felt the heat building like it always did.    It was like a furnace that burned inside her and with each spell she cast it grew hotter and hotter.  As she had grown in power, she realized that the heat only multiplied.  But the undead kept coming.  And the defenders kept dying, and rising to kill their fellows as undead.  She could see Dhal’es on the other side spreading holy light here and there, but he had stopped killing them in his way of doing so with Madriel’s light.  He must have exhausted that ability.  She kept trying to stop the wooden things, but they were not burning.  Damn them, damn them all, she thought.

Einkill and Corgan were nowhere to be seen, they had taken the other two flanks.  She hoped they were faring well.  She only knew that, by the gods, she could not help them.  She was having enough trouble here.  She was beginning to feel the press.  The archers were dying by the creatures crawling up the sides of the fort and she heard the sounds of someone trying to burst in the gates.  She got a laugh out of the fact that her pillar had caused a great deal of chaos to her left side.  The right pillar would keep her from being rained arrows down on like a little while ago.  That stung…  Draxus held on for dear life as she cast over the battlements. 

 _How in the name of Madriel am I supposed to do this?_ Zen thought as she cast and waited another volley of arrows.  She’d cast webs along the front of the place where they were trying to burst in through the main gate, and pillars of attraction on either side, to stop arrows and to try to stop anyone from coming inside.  It seemed to have worked.  The battering rams had stopped, and not near as many creatures came up and over as there had been.  Zen had not seen the likes of this siege in years.  Not since her time in Amalthea during the Druid War had she seen this kind of carnage.  As she slung her spells one time in particular came to mind, when she’d been sent to get a priest to heal a man of a grievous wound, and while she was there, the Black Druids and their minions overran the camp.

_Zen ran.  She ran for everything she was worth.  She knew if she stopped, she’d die.  The creatures were at her heels, and she feared they would catch up with her any moment.  She turned back and cast various little spells, and once in a while, one of the creatures would stop, dazed for a short while, then run.  There were all sorts of them. They were not real of course.  Aramil had told her about these, they were summoned creatures by the Black Druids.  Some were real, though, and all of them could kill you just as easy.  Somehow she saw the entrance amid the dust.  She looked back; they were mere seconds behind her.  She grabbed the handle and pushed, then jumped down and slammed the device closed, and called for help.  Aramil came running down the corridor and cast a spell over Zen’s head at the door.  It stopped moving.  He smiled at his student._

_“You made it, my dear.”  She nodded, but her eyes were full of tears.  “What is it?” he asked, kneeling before her.  “Th-they are d-dead…all of them…” she said shakily, dropping to her knees as well.  Aramil made a face.  “What do  you mean?  There were no armsmen where I sent you, they are not resistors…tell me what happened!” he said, his face showing great concern.  Zen caught her breath and nodded._

_“I went there to find Myrian, as you said, the healer.  I found her in the makeshift temple to Tanil.  Sh-she was standing up to follow me out the door, when there was a great explosion.  Fire was everywhere!  She didn’t die, though, she was the only one left alive after the blast.  She looked around her, where the wounded had been, and they were charred and burned, beyond all healing for her even.”  Zen stopped for a moment and took a deep breath.  “She came to me, and I smelled her hair, burned…”  Zen wandered off for a moment with her eyes and Aramil shook her, a hand on each arm.  She focused back on him.  “Then…then we got outside, and there were riders on horseback, and they…they killed everyone they saw.  Noone drew weapons in hopes that they would not kill them, but it did no good.  They rode them down, master, they killed them!” she said, tears returning.  “Finish, girl, finish!” Armamil told her quickly, his old eyes betraying the pain he felt._

_“Th-then we ran.  Myrian and I ran toward where we thought was safe, but then it exploded, and we saw strange creatures…with snakes on them, and she told me to run.  She turned to face them and I ran…and those beasts came after me…but they are all dead…  Master, why?”  Zen’s face was stricken.  Aramil reached out and pulled her close.  She buried her head in his robes and she heard his voice tell the others.  “Myrian is dead, they’ve killed her base and all the wounded that were there…and they didn’t do anything…”_

Zen shook her head coming out of the reverie.  The past was gone.  The evil druids took Amalthea and destroyed it.  These Calastians were trying to do the same to this small Fort.  Zen carried on, any tears that came to her eyes as she cast were quickly evaporated by the heat she generated.  She continued, casting spells on those that were fighting for their lives on the battlements, and eventually they were safe.  She sent her shades out to find out what else was going on, and they reported back a big creature that Grimlick, the other Greataxe, was fighting with.  She swallowed.  “Go see if you can help.  But be careful, do you think you can do so without getting killed?”  Jarren spoke surely, “We might be destroyed,” he answered.  “Okay, well, just…get away if you get hurt, but try to help him…”  They left, and soon Zen decided to try to help some others.  She changed her form to fly and then flew out over, and saw something to her left.  She headed off and began casting to help Grimlick.

Things happened so quickly that she found things in a blur.  Seeing Einkill finally, his body mangled and nearly unsalvageable by Dhal’es made her heart rise and she wanted to cry, and then the bone creature fell.  Dhal’es was hard at work attempting to revive Einkill.  Zen fought the urge to cry, though if she had none would know from the heat that she still generated.  Grimlick had also fell in battle.  She landed and found her shades.  She asked what happened, and Jaren told her that he guess they had weakened the creature and aided him in killing it.  Jaren didn’t know where Damias had gone to and Zen told him to find him.  Then she vaguely heard Corgan’s voice.  She took off as quickly as she could to find him, and find him she did, under the remains of the bone creature, not breathing.   Zen knew he was beyond the aid of healing potions and she had no ideas left.  She had no choice but to change her form with her last powerful spell, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to get him back, so she transformed herself into a giant and grabbed him up.  She could not think of any other way to carry him back.  She rushed to the battlements with him and got him to the dwarves up there, but she could not make her own way back inside the fort after the havoc she caused in front of the place and the rope was too slim for her great weight. 

She decided to try to help the others where there was a lot of shooting, but no attackers to be seen now that she had great strength.  She began to walk, and suddenly she was sped around to the other side and face to face with the lone robed figure that would haunt her mind for quite a long time…

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

 

_  
_

A Sleepless Night in Fort Anvule

 

[This takes place after the massive attack during the night of many undead creatures.  The group has barely escaped with their lives, and Zen, having met with the man, or creature that seems to be responsible is left feeling a bit…strange.]

 

      Things had settled down quite a bit.  Though the people were saddened by the fact that they had lost some of the defenders, there was a feeling of relief, the siege had stopped, for the moment.  Zen, however, was far more disturbed now than she was before the siege began.  She could not help that, of course, after what she had seen…  She simply could not believe that creature, whatever he was.  She watched as the dead were set alight, and people tried to return to a semblance of life.  She stood very still, against a wall and watched.  Drax sat on her shoulder like usual, and Jaren had found Damias, who apparently had run off when the creature injured him.  She couldn’t blame him.  She did tell them not to get killed.  She’d sent both the shades back to the tower to wait for her.

      Einkill and Grimlick were talking, and Dhal’es was doing the usual, healing those who needed it, Corgan, she hadn’t seen for a while, she assumed that he was contemplating the fact that he had been brought back from death by Dhal’es a few moments before, and no one really paid attention to her, she blended so well into the shadows around her.  She stared into space.  People walked by and didn’t see her, and Draxus, who sensed her state of mind, did not say anything to her.  It was surprisingly quiet.  She began to walk, pulling her cloak tight, her mind wandering, as well as her feet.

      _“I’ve been waiting for you…” She heard trumpets sound from all around, and all the forces pulled back, apparently in retreat.  She felt the spell roll over her, and take away her size.  She stared at him, her eyes fixated on his eyes now.  Red, flaming eyes.  She’d never seen anything quite like that before.  Her breath caught.  He wore robes, and nothing else that she could see, and carried a staff of some sort with him.  A caster of some sort, obviously.  She swallowed.  She didn’t have the power left to battle another caster.  She couldn’t even cast another fireball at the moment.  She stood her ground though, trying not to show fear.  She would not, even though at the moment it was rampant through her body.  She held herself still and focused on him.  His hair was scraggy and stringy, and his teeth could only be described as feral.  His voice sounded strange and it made her shiver.  Zen set herself.  “I’ve enjoyed our little game…” he said, a smirk or something playing at his lips.  Zen stood her ground still.  She had to.  Game? He thought of this as a game?_

_She nodded.  “You’ll have to come visit me in my home in the Kelders…” he said to her, his eyes moving over her.  She simply stared at him, what else could she do?  “And what is your name?” she asked, wanting to know exactly who she was speaking to, and who was the cause of all of this.  “Arrach,” he answered.  “Yes, you will come with me to my home in the Kelders and be my wife.”  Zen could not help but feel a rush of surprise. She blinked rapidly at this statement.  She was to be his wife?  She thought, not in twenty thousand lives…but she said nothing.  She did not want this man or creature, whatever he was, to press his advantage this moment.  “I think I bid you farewell for this evening…” she said instead.  He then pointed his staff at her and a circle was burned into the ground around her briefly.  She glanced at it, curious of course, and then it faded. She sucked in a deep breath and looked back up to him._

_A young girl apparently knocked unconscious or dazed during the battle got up and started to stagger away.  The robed figure reached out and picked her up with one hand, snapping her neck audibly, and then dropped her dead form to the ground. Zen stood motionless.  She was definitely dead, and Zen knew it.  There was nothing to be done about her now. She stood, simply horrified by the fact that he so wantonly killed the child.  He looked at her.  “Wait, the best is yet to come,” he said, and the child stood back up, her own eyes a yellowish red, similar to his own, though not near as intense.  Zen began to breathe harder.  She was focused on him, because she wanted to run so badly away from him.  She had a thousand questions she wanted questions to, number one on her mind was what exactly was he, but she kept her mouth closed.  She didn’t dare say anything for fear of what he would do.  “You too can have this power,” he said to her, a feral smile upon his face.  “I will return for you…” he said and turned and walked away.  The girl followed him._

_Zen swallowed and ran shakily to the wall where the rope was.  She looked down at her hands that were shaking violently almost.  “Ah…to hells with the rope…” she said, using the last spell she could cast beside the very minor ones and levitated up and over the wall, and located the others.  She told them of her encounter.  The didn’t seem to worry that there would be any way for him to do what he said, after all Einkill, Dhal’es and Corgan were with her, and if she had to fight him mage on mage, then she was plenty powerful to take care of herself.  Zen wasn’t so sure._

      She nearly ran over Einkill, who was done with Grimlick and was coming toward her.  In her thoughts, she didn’t stop when he approached, and almost walked into him.  “Oh…” she said and smiled at him.  Einkill looked up at her.  “What’s the matter with you, elf?  Ye should be pleased, we beat ‘em back, and beat ‘em back good.”  Zen nodded her head.  “I suppose…”  Einkill cocked his head to the side.  “What is it?” he said, his face serious now, no banter in his voice.  “Nothing, really, I’m just…tired…I think I’ll go to my tower, I’m pretty well spent…” she said, and began to move away.  He put a hand on her to stop her.  “Nay, that is not the answer is it, girl…” he said.  Zen swallowed.  “I…just…its nothing.  Its mine to deal with.” And she began to try to leave.

      “Nay, what is on your mind?” he asked, stepping in front of her.  She sighed.  “I’m…a little worried, is all…” she said slowly.  “About what?” Einkill asked.  “That those undead will come back, yeah, we are all worried on that…but that isn’t it….” He looked at her.  “That thing…he…he said he was coming back…for me…and well…” Einkill nodded.  “Not while I’m around, he’s not taking you anywhere,” he said.  Zen smiled.  She nodded, her heart filled…but she still quivered inside.  What if they couldn’t stop him?  “I…I know…” she said and turned and headed toward her tower.  Einkill called after her in middle elven, “He won’t take you from here.”  She waved to him, her solemn sadness still there. 

      Einkill watched her go and noted the fact that she was not fully herself this night.  He stood for a while, watching her slim figure move into the shadows.  He was worried too of course.  Corgan had the same worry.  They couldn’t withstand another attack like the one they just faced.  If this Arrach did return for her…what if they couldn’t stop him?  Einkill shook his head.  That was foolishness on his part.  Einkill knew that he could be depended on to stop him, after all, anything as ugly as Zen had described would no doubt look better on the sharp end of his axe than walking around.  Zen could damn well take care of herself, too.  She would set him on fire quicker than he knew what was coming if he tried anything.  And Corgan would be there too, and he’d like to see a mage get past his strange defenses, since Zen could cast a fireball right on top of him, and everyone else would fall down dead, but Corgan would walk out unscathed.  Dhal’es would be there too, and he could handle those undead nasties that he seemed to create.  Hrumph.  He’d like to see this Arrach try to get a hold of Zen.  Wasn’t going to happen.

      Zen continued on, her mind definitely not in the frame to speak with anyone.  She was scared witless herself over this, and she could not stand to try to make anyone feel better at this moment.  So she stuck to the shadows and avoided almost everyone on her way back.  She was definitely intent on her privacy this evening.  She got to her tower and made her way up to where she slept and sat down.  The two shades were waiting there for her already, and she bid them hello.  They were doing much better now that someone was not trying to kill them, and both said as much.  Zen wasn’t as responsive as they would have liked but they left her alone, content to be safe.

      Zen stood and stared out the window at the sky.  She wasn’t sure what to feel.  His words rang in here mind again and again, no matter how hard she tried to put it out.  _I will return for you…_ and the eyes…those eyes burned in her memory.  She shivered once more.  She turned and saw Draxus, tired of her inattention this evening, had decided to curl up and go to sleep.  She smiled.  Such a sweet creature, she couldn’t have asked for a better companion and charge…  She sighed and turned back to the window.

      _What does he want with me?_ She thought.  _What have I got to do with him? I’m not anything special…why has he chosen me to pursue in this end?_ She recalled the great bone creature, in writing that was neither elven she knew, it was low elven.  Was he…no…couldn’t be.  She shook her head and continued to stare outside.  _Mistress, I pray to you once more this evening…simply out of my fears.  Help me get past this and deal with what lies ahead.  I don’t know what it is, but I will tell you this, I don’t like that creature, and do not want to go with him, and you know that as you know my heart.  What can I do?  Mistress, may your shadow follow me._ Zen opened her eyes, only then realizing they were closed.  She swallowed hard.  What could she do to stop something that could command thousands of undead?  She shivered once more and sat down to enter her trance hoping that the image of his face would leave her.  She entered her trance as usual and entered the place where she would find peace.

_Zen felt herself enter her trance, and it was a slow lethargic thing this night.  She felt herself once again aware and it was a bright and sunny day on an open field.  She looked around, the sky was blue and clear, not even a single cloud, the sun was warm and soothing on her skin, and she though briefly it strange, but it did not hurt her eyes at all.  The field had grass high enough to tickle her ankles and was covered with assorted wildflowers.  Vaguely, in a sluggish way, she thought this odd, as such was not the normal visions she carried into trance with her.  Though, it was mildly pleasant even so, and relaxing.  She looked down on herself and she noted she wore a beautiful dress of pure white that swirled around her in the breeze that came across the field.  She heard the wind, and in it laughter.  She turned around once more and there were many people for as far as she could see, standing, sitting, eating, laughing, and there were children running and playing._

_She began to walk towards them, the world surreal almost as she moved, as though she moved through time and space.   Children, mostly human, but also Hin and Elven, ran around her laughing and giggling, playing catch and tag.  She smiled and then noticed an old elven woman standing with a human in a guard’s uniform.  They were talking to each other.  Then they noticed Zen and turned and waved.  It was the old elf from Amalthea, the one she’d learned the funeral dirge from, and her old lover, Dreone.  They did not move, only kept talking, and somehow Zen could not stop walking forward.  She saw many people she knew from Amalthea.  Mother and Father, her brothers and sister, and even Aramil, and all took the time to wave, but no one spoke to her.  She kept walking, the green grass sweeping around her.  In the far distance she could see something, like an end, but she could not tell what it was.  Briefly, she thought she saw Quarion, but she wasn’t sure.  Then she was certain she saw Teaka, who waved and continued speaking with another elf, one that looked like a wood elf._

_She walked on and soon she saw people from Savan.  There was Shay-La and Philomena.  Both waved, but as Philomena waved, Zen felt a shadow cross, and the sun was no longer as bright.  Her clothes seemed darker, though, not pure white any more.  As she continued, her mind felt the presence of Draxus grow stronger, and then she saw others.  King Thain, and his family were there, and Garrit, and others from Burok Torn, but living and dead.  She looked around, and they all waved, but none spoke to her.  She sucked in a breath, seeing that far off there were about four figures.  She continued, and passed Gnorm along the way, he waved to her and fluttered his great wings, speaking with Glayrock of all people._

_Then she saw those with the robes of Madriel, those they met on the way to Mithril.  Then there were people from Mithril, and as Tendra grew closer, Zen’s clothes changed, to clothes of pitch black, and fitted closer to her body.  She waved, and there were too many others that Zen did not really know.  Barconius, Nabila, Danye, and all she saw and briefly recognized.  Then she was even closer to the figures at the end.  She saw those that had died in Angelsgate conversing with their murderers, and Zen felt the most surreal feeling wash over her at the site.  She then saw those in Fort Anvule, the elves, the dwarves, and the humans that she’d come to care for.  And she could see figures at the end._

_Einkill, Corgan, and Dhal’es were there.  She walked on, and there was a fourth figure swathed in darkness that she could not discern.  She tried to hurry, but she kept the same pace as she approached.  Her friends smiled and as she passed them she looked back.  They, unlike the others, disappeared.  She turned back and watched as the figure turned around.  It wore robes and suddenly it spread its arms, and black energy spiraled out from it.  Zen ducked down, and felt no effect as it rolled over her.  She stood and looked, and the field was black, the grass dead, and covered in bodies instead of living.  The sky slowly faded to darkness.  She heard laughter in a familiar voice.  “Come with me…”  Zen looked back, and saw it was Arrach, throwing back his cowl, revealing his feral face.  “I’ll give you this power…the best is yet to come!”  Zen tried to run, but could not.  She tried to speak but no words would come._

_Those lying dead on the field stood all around her and began reaching for her, and suddenly she could run, and stood before him once more, his eyes burning.  She wanted to say so much, but she had no voice.  His arms were open.  “You need only come to me…take the power I offer you…” Zen shook her head and somehow stopped herself short of his reach.  He smiled.  “You will.”  He turned and Zen watched as a little girl who had lain beside him on the ground stood to follow him.  He looked back, and said simply, “I will return for you…”_

      _I will return for you…_ Zen’s eyes opened quickly and she sat still on her bed, her breath hard and fast.  She pulled her knees to her chest and put her face down.  Draxus still lay asleep and she didn’t hear anything from the shades.  “Leave me alone, dammit,” she said under her breath.  “I don’t care who or what you are, or what power you offer, leave me alone…” She sat still like that, pulled up into a ball like a child, for quite a while.  Memories flooded her of Amalthea and men who think that any female can be theirs with enough force.  Memories came to her of times when she narrowly escaped fates worse than death.  Now she was not about to be dragged off to become some creature’s wife, slave, or plaything?  “I will not see it happen,” she whispered fiercely under her breath, ending her sentiments with a dwarven curse she’d heard Einkill use more than once.  She felt warm tears in her eyes welling with her fear, and determination.

      Hours later, after yet another disturbance when they thought the army was marching on them once again, she sat in the same position again.  She hadn’t moved much, even when the call sounded.  She was an archer at this point.  She wasn’t really sure if she’d entered trance or not but she might have.  Her mind kept coming back to a circle of fire and those burning red eyes.  The circle of fire…what did it mean?  She stood slowly and began to pace, Draxus readjusting when she moved off the bed.  She couldn’t return to her trance after that…dream?  Was that what it was?  A dream?  She’d known her kind to see things in trance but not usually what a human would call a dream…a memory maybe.  She was living the memory again…perhaps that was it.  She looked out the window, it was still dark.  Glancing down to Draxus, he was curled up tight in a ball, fast asleep, looking like some sort of strange scaly cat with wings.  She could see the end of night, and could feel the shadows of early dawn coming on slowly, creeping across the horizon, edging out the night.

      She couldn’t rest this evening, no matter how she tried.  Her trance had not even brought peace to her troubled mind.  She sucked in a deep breath.  _I haven’t spent myself like that in a long time,_ she thought.  _That has to be it.  I haven’t spent all my spell energy in a long time its draining, that’s for certain._   She nodded fiercely as if by the motion she would convince herself of the fact.  _Like hell,_ she told herself.  _You know that its not that, and you’re a fool if you try to tell yourself otherwise, you know that its HIM that is making you restless,_ she chided herself.  No use in lying to herself.  That was worse than lying to the others.

      She flopped onto the bed, disturbing Draxus.  He muttered something unintelligible under his breath and hopped to the floor, climbing into his little cage and curling up in the folds of the blanket there, away from his mom who was making too much bouncing for his likening on the bed.  She watched, with only half attention.  Her mind was shifting to herself again once more.  _Why me?_ she thought for the thousandth time.  _Why has he decided that he wants ME to be his wife?_   Slowly, anger was beginning to build up inside her on that issue.  _How dare he tell me what I’m going to do!  I’ll tell him what I’m going to do!  I’m not about to let any man…or thing…tell me what to do._ She briefly felt a little bit better angry.  The anger made the fear abate for a moment.

      She decided to go for a walk.  She told the half-asleep Draxus that she would be back right after dawn and he sleepily said okay.  She began to walk.  How did he know who she was to even look for her?  No one except those in Savan, Burok Torn, and a few in Mithril knew of her, as publicity was not her idea of a good thing, considering her station in the Shadow Walkers.  Then how would someone in the Kelders…know?  She stopped.  Bards…the bard had sung of her, the bard in Owen’s Point had sang of them…what if those songs had reached ears such as Arrach’s?  She shivered at the thought.  She took a deep breath and kept walking.  It wasn’t over.  She was sure of that, no, it was just beginning.

      She made her way to the room the others were staying in, where she had been staying until she took to staying in her tower.    She stood against the wall as dawn came up in full, the sun shinning through the window beside her.  Corgan rose after a moment or two, and was followed by Dhal’es who went directly off into prayer, taking no real notice of her.  Corgan almost walked right past her, but turned his head and looked at her curiously.  “Zen…” he said strangely.   She looked at him for a moment.  She didn’t wear her cloak, in fact, she didn’t have on the entirety of her things.  She didn’t wear her bracers, or any of her jewelry, and she didn’t have Draxus or the shoulder pad on her shoulder.  She was standing there in a simple light shirt of pale blue and a simple skirt, which she typically wore to sleep in, not walk around in.

      “He’s coming back, you know,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.  Corgan, who was still morning weary looked at her for a second, his mind clearing, since last night was a rough one for him as well.  In fact it had been shortly after he was revived that she had told him about the incident, and then not truly in full.  “You didn’t see him,” she continued, her voice still low, her eyes focusing on the ground before Corgan, not meeting his eyes.  “You didn’t see his eyes…He’s coming for me…what if we can’t stop him?”  Corgan stood for a moment.  “No, he won’t.  We won’t let him.  I’m more than capable of handling your mage friend if he needs handling…”  Dhal’es walked up to him just then and added, “He won’t do any such thing, he’s an abomination, creating those undead as he undoubtedly did.  Madriel will see that he pays for his actions against the living.”  Zen looked at them.  Einkill stepped out just then, apparently their talking had woke him up.  He looked at her once more, his eyes conveying his sense that this was all a big deal over nothing.  She held up a hand for him to wait.

      “We can’t withstand another attack like last night.  We all know it.  We barely survived this one.  Tell me this…was he waiting for me to show up?”  Dhal and Corgan exchanged a glance.  She smiled.  “The retreat…the retreat sounded the moment I came face to face with him.  You of course did not see this.  But it did.  ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said, and the trumpets sounded, and the undead left the trench they had dug.  Was he waiting for me to show up?”  She looked up them now, her face up, the shadows covering it.    “It seems strange to me that they would suddenly pull their attack.”  She held up a hand.  “Yes, we took a huge chunk of their forces down.  I’ll admit it.  But here is an interesting question.  What if it was nothing but a show of force?”  Zen sighed.  “I’ve got my ideas…” she smiled, “And I know that there may be nothing of it,” she whispered, low now.  “But why, pray tell, if he wanted me so bad, did he not take me there…I was powerless to resist him.”  They all stared.

      “He didn’t know you were powerless,” Corgan answered.  She smiled.  “True, I give you that, but I’d been using spells quite heavily for the whole battle…he showed himself to be another caster, so he would know that I was at least not fully capable of defending myself against the likes of him…so why?  And why pull the attack?”  The others looked at each other.  She held up two fingers.  “Two reasons come to mind.  I have to go with him, by choice, perhaps.  Or perhaps his fire circle marked me in some fashion, though I have no idea how, as I did not feel anything, but still, its possible is it not?”  The others said nothing.  They knew she was not far off from things on this issue.  “These people are obviously not the same ones we saw in Angelsgate.  Do you think that we caused enough havoc from this army to call in a ‘special’ aid?  One that…is more mercenary than officer?  Its possible.  I know, not likely at all, but it is a thought, he’s so radically different.  After all, did we encounter undead in Angelsgate?”  Dhal’es shook his head, “No, we’ve seen no undead until we met that great huge beast and the Slain we saw here.  Could not the makers of those be the same as the makers of these undead?”

      Zen thought for a moment. “Aye, they could be, I’m not definite on anything, after all it is a matter of maybes, isn’t it.  I know this, but I want you to know my mind on this.  After all, it concerns me pretty heavily…” she said with a smirk.  She took a deep breath, the shadows playing on her pale face.  “Okay, I’m seeing four possibilities for outcomes with this Arrach…thing.  One, he will continue as is, and assault the fort until we break or beat him for good.  Two, he will make good on his word and come fore me, silently and with no one knowing the better until after the fact.  Three, he will make good on his word and amass a force and force my hand…and make me choose between going with him, and sacrificing those in the fort, and he will leave, letting the fort live.  Or, four, same as number three, but he kills everyone anyway.  Three and four come from the idea that the last attack was nothing but a show of force…” 

      “Ye’re crazy, durn elf,” Einkill said at last.  “Not a one of those things will happen, except me killin’ him with Titandeath!”  Zen smiled, “I am glad for your confidence, Einkill but I fear…” Einkill unceremoniously interrupted her, “Bah!  To fear somethin’ is to invite what ye fear to come after you!” He said finally, staring at her evenly, in a manner that left no chance of him being wrong.  “Maybe,” she said in a whisper.  “Maybe that is what must be…” Einkill shook his head.  Corgan place a hand on his arm.  “She’s thought it out.  She has a point, he probably will return.  However, we will handle him in that case, Zen.  Fear it not.”  Zen smiled at him.  “I am glad to have you three.  You have no idea.  Without you…I would still be…who I once was.  And you mean more to me than I can say…” she said to them, a real smile on her lips.

      “But please, let us say no more.  Let us enjoy any peace we can garner for the moment.”  Zen nodded and stepped from her shadowed place from the wall and looked out the window.  The sun was not up yet, it was just dawn breaking.    She looked back.  “Promise me something, and this isn’t just now, but always,” she said serious once again.  “If…if anything does happen to me…tell Tendra at the guild.  She may help.”  Dhal’es nodded, but said, “Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to tell the Ladies Blackburn or Silverheart?  I thought they headed the guild?”  Zen shook her head.  “I have my reasons.  Tendra…is a…friend.  She will take care of relations with the upper tiers for you.  Its…just easier.”  She looked back at the rising sun.  She sighed.  “Well, enough of my foolish theories, I did not rest, I will retire to the tower for now.”  She began to walk past them, then paused beside Einkill.  “If you need me, come get me, I’ll be ready should another fight come to us this day.”  Einkill nodded, “Very well, and quit with the foolish thoughts, girl.”  She nodded and started to leave then stopped.  Almost inaudibly, she whispered, “I’m the shadow not the light…” She turned her head toward Dhal’es.  “Remember, Light of Madriel, where there is a shadow, there is a light to have cast it.”  Dhal’es looked at her for a moment, but she was soon out the door. 

      As she departed she nearly ran over the messenger there to tell them all that the army was massing.  She smiled and shrugged and waited as Corgan and Einkill joined her and they headed to the battlements.  There they stood, and waited as Corgan went to see, and then returned to wait.  As dawn broke, the rider came up and requested the Wayfarers be present, and the told him that Dhal’es was indisposed.  The messenger said that the siege was quit, at the behest of Lord Arrach.  Zen’s stomach churned at the mention of his name.  Then he spoke to her, “And a message from Lord Arrach, for the one with the hair of fire and gold, and the ears of points of perfection, you have not been forgotten.” Under her breath, Zen muttered something unintelligible.  She was about done with fearing what was to happen.  She decided to head back to the tower, but she would be too drained this day to cast any spells, that was for certain.

      She headed to her tower, and climbed the steps up.  She sat on the bed and then decided to lay down for a while, resting at least would alleviate her tiredness…or so she hoped.  She soon found herself in trance once more.  She must have really not gotten in enough hours last night, she thought as she slipped into the more peaceful state. 

      _I will return for you… and don’t fear, you haven’t been forgotten…_ Zen’s eyes flew open and once again she felt her breath coming hard and fast.  She breathed in deep and got out of the bed and went to the window.  The sun was well up now, she had at least tranced for a couple of hours.  She went to her things and retrieved a brush, and began brushing her hair.  She then put on her casting clothes and her cloak.  Draxus was up playing with things across the floor.  She looked outside.  People moved around like normal.  The siege was over.  There was freedom from death that everyone wanted.  Everyone seemed to feel pretty normal and happy this morning…except her.


End file.
